July 2011

USGS WaterAlert (water.usgs.gov/wateralert)

Since we get this question frequently, here is how to modify or cancel your email or text notifications from USGS Water Alert.

Water Web Services (waterservices.usgs.gov)

Three production-class water web services are now available. Read more details on the Waterservices web site.

New Daily Values web service - Daily value data for one or more sites can now be retrieved in a number of flexible ways, similar to the Instantaneous Values web service, including sites by site number, state, county, hydrologic unit and latitude/longitude box. The default output is WaterML 1.1. You are invited to test the service.
For any of the three production services, selecting a major site type now returns sites that have minor site types of the same type. For example, selecting the Stream major site type (ST) also returns minor stream site types of canal (ST-CA), ditch (ST-DCH) and tidal stream (ST-TS). Previously, you had to explicitly request all four site types to get all stream site types. In addition there is no limit to the number of site types that can be specified in one call. Previously the limit was four.
Site web service - This service is no longer Beta and is now production class.

Unfortunately, there is no way yet to get the data in a XML format. Geography Markup Language (GML) will eventually become the service's XML default format once metadata integration issues with GML are resolved. Currently GML support is expected in November 2011. The service's default format continues to be tab-delimited (RDB).

Instantaneous Values web service

The service was re-engineered to use a common code base, but functionality is largely unchanged.
The feature that allowed focus on instruments at a particular site location (methodId) has been removed, due to a change in how the USGS configures instruments at sites. The methodId parameter can still be used, but will be ignored and multiple sensors may appear in the output.
Previously, format=json,1.0 was allowed. Now, format=json,1.1 is preferred, as it mirrors version 1.1 of WaterML. format=json,1.0 will still work, but is deprecated and may disappear in future versions of this service.

Retirement of interim Daily Values and Site web services planned for October 1, 2011. The old daily values web service, first released in 2008, which returns daily values for a single site only, will be retired on October 1, 2011. The service is documented here. In addition, an old version of the site service (which returns site information only for a single site, or for those within a lat/long box) will also be retired on that date. That service is documented here. There are other very old and rarely used web services also on this machine that will also be retired on this date. The host interim.waterservices.usgs.gov will not be accessible after that date. All web services will be hosted from redundant servers on waterservices.usgs.gov. Users should migrate applications to the new services by this date.
Water web service usage is growing. The first production web service (the instantaneous values web service) became a production service in August 2010. Since its introduction, waterservices.usgs.gov has seen steady growth. In October 2010, 1.6M successful page requests were recorded. In June 2011, 7.8M successful page requests were recorded, 7.4M of which were from outside the USGS.
In the site documentation, some page names have changed to have shorter names:

http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/WOF-IV-Service.html becomes http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/IV-Service.html
http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/WOF-IV-Test-Tool.html becomes http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/IV-Test-Tool.html
http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/GML-Site-Service.html becomes http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/Site-Service.html
http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/GML-Site-Test-Tool.html becomes http://waterservices.usgs.gov/rest/Site-Test-Tool.html

USGS Water Data for the Nation - (waterdata.usgs.gov)

Functionality

Improved water-quality searches

Water-quality samples now display when no results are associated with the samples. Previously they were only seen in tab-separated (RDB) output.
If your search criteria includes specific parameter codes, none of which are found, a no data found message will display.

The number of records that can be downloaded in one request has been raised from 35,000 to 100,000.
The link to "Build sequence" and "Build table" on the current condition page is now "Build time-series" and "Build real-time table", which is easier to understand. The associated explanatory text has also been changed.
Output formats

The time datum (zone) now appears in both HTML and in tab-delimited (RDB) site-visit outputs.
Parameter description comments in tab-delimited (RDB) output that are not actually available for the sites requested no longer appear.
Fixed a bug to add a tab character between the datetime and tz_cd fields in the tab-separated outputs for Instantaneous data. This was deployed as a patch some months ago.
Updated Instantaneous Value data flags:

Dry flag description has changed from "Zero flow" to "Dry", which is more descriptive.
Added ZF1 flag to indicate Zero Flow.
Added Mnt flag to indicate the site is undergoing maintenance and thus not reporting.

Added a ‘P’ code description to HTML tables for current condition values to indicate they are provisional.

Graphs

Fahrenheit scale appears in relevant graphs. Fahrenheit tic marks appear on the right side of graphs that show temperatures (parameter codes 00010 and 00020). Celsius still appears for legends on the left side of these graphs.
An error message that was generated when a measurement partial date existed no longer shows when graphs are requested. This occurred with graphs for groundwater field measurements and surface-water peaks.
Groundwater-level graphs are no longer inconsistent when the measurement timezone for instantaneous values is different than the timezone used for recording manual field water-level measurements.

Water-quality changes

The number of sites and observations shown in the search criteria screens for daily value and groundwater field water-level observations is now correct.
Bugs in filtering were corrected to show only sites that have the requested parameter codes.
The table of available data is now showing the correct counts.
The minimum number of observations option should work correctly now for all searches.

Four current condition parameters (32295, 45590. 72206, 72207 and 99243) were added. See our parameter code look-up page for full information on parameters.

32295 - Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), water, in situ, single band excitation, fluorescence emission, ppb QSE
45590 - Temperature, internal, within equipment shelter, degrees Fahrenheit
72206 - Sublimation from snowpack per recording interval, millimetes
72207 - Albedo (ratio of reflected to total incoming solar radiation), ratio
99243 - Distance to snow surface from sensor, centimeters

Documentation changes

Updated text descriptions on the search criteria page when searching for sites from the inventory page.
Updated the help reference tables to the July 2011 version.
Improved description of text associated with codes at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/codes_help.
Improved information on the About us page.
Updated Automated retrieval information page.

Other bug fixes and other minor changes:

To minimize confusion, map legends are consistent with USGS WaterWatch.
Data descriptions for instantaneous and daily value data now include a USGS water science center specific label to better describe the parameter name: parameter name (Location Name) [WSC web label]
When selecting an output format and retrieving by date, when you click on the start or end date field, the associated radio button is now selected.
When refining sites listed on a current condition page, the navigation banner now forces the user to select either station name or station number.
To accommodate accessibility requirements, a link to a plug-in page has been added to the footer on all pages.
Corrected bugs where the well depth, hole depth, and altitude value search criteria were not being used to constrain retrievals.

Usage facts about this site.

Did you know that USGS Water Data for the Nation web statistics for this site are publicly available? Check out our Analog statistics.
Usage of this site has been growing steadily since it was released in Beta form in 2001. In June 2011, a record 26.33M successful page requests were made, with most data requests for recent stream flow data.
At least half of the traffic to the site comes from automated requests.
On a typical month, this site is the second most visited USGS site after Earthquakes.