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July 2012

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

  • Modernized Help System - Help information has been placed into a content management system and made available via a new domain: help.waterdata.usgs.gov.
    • This has many advantages including:
      • Help data is now searchable. Simply enter the search term you are interested in the help system's search box and find related help content.
      • Easier to update help information. Help information can be updated as needed rather than at scheduled releases three times a year.
      • Tagging. The help system allows articles to have tags associated with them that associate an article with one or more interest areas. With tags you can easily see all articles with a similar tag. A tag cloud on the help system's main page makes it easy to see popular tags and to see which tags have more related articles.
      • Easier maintenance of the USGS Water Data for the Nation site. Moving help information into its own system makes the main system smaller and more maintainable.
    • When you click on help link in the USGS Water Data for the Nation site, the help information will appear in your current window or browser tab.
    • Some context sensitive help (when you hover over the question mark icon) will be retrieved from the help system and appear in a small thought balloon. A full integration will occur in a future release.
    • The news page (this page) has moved into the help system. It is accessible as a newsfeed, which means that you can access the news page with any RSS compatible newsreader, such as Google Reader. This allows you to see system news without having to visit the site.
    • The help system allows for easy categorization of help material in separate areas.
    • Moving content into a content management system resulted in some minor loss of functionality. All codes are fully described and can be viewed in a browser or downloaded as tab-delimited data. However, previous functionality allowing codes to be downloaded as compressed tab-delimited files or to be viewed in a fixed-width format (PRE) are not available. These features may be added in a subsequent release.
  • Mapper. The functionality of the mapper has been improved. ESRI Web Mapping is now used instead of Google Maps.
    • The following functions of the Mapper are consistent with previous versions:
      • Selection of sites by one or more combinations of site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • Selection of sites by data characteristics including availability of current conditions, historical observations, daily values, measurements, peak values, water-quality data, or a published annual data report.
      • Display of sites on a map.
      • View/save list of sites showing on the map.
      • Display of sites on alternative base map backgrounds.
      • Search for sites by location: state, territory, or address.
      • Map control and information features including zoom, pan, scalebars, and an overview map.
      • Feedback is provided to let user know that activity is occurring for long retrievals.
      • URL options are available to open initial view at any geographic location and zoom level.
    • Change from Google to ESRI Applications Programming Interface (API):
      • Sites are now clickable beginning at zoom level 10 for groundwater sites and zoom level 8 for all other sites (versus zoom level 11 previously).
      • Added map controls: Previous/Next view, Refresh (redraw).
      • Added ability to lower/raise control and information panels to provide a larger map view.
      • Added map layers (overlays): USGS National Hydrography Dataset, USGS offices.
    • Change from Google geographic search to ESRI geographic search:
      • Added search by USGS site number(s).
      • Added search by Watershed Region.
    • Change from Google base map library to ESRI base map library:
      • Google terrain base map is no longer available.
      • Replaced TerraServer topographic maps with ESRI topographic maps.
      • Added base maps: National Geographic, Bing Maps, Open Street Maps, USGS National Map, ESRI Hydrography.
    • Added URL options:
      • Open initial view showing one or more combinations of site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • Open initial view with overview map turned off.
    • The following functions are no longer available:
      • Export list of sites as HTML and get KML for all selected sites at same time.
      • Cancel drawing while it is executing. Improvements in drawing performance make this function unnecessary.
    • Added new functions to export selected sites:
      • A separate file must be created for each single combination of site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • List sites as HTML (.html) and get KML (.kml) are still available for a single site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • The following are new export file types:
        • List of site numbers for input to data searches (.txt)
        • Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)
        • Comma-separated values (.csv)
        • Tab-limited values (.rdb)
        • ESRI ShapeFile (.shp).
    • Added functions to display enhaced site information:
      • Drawing activity indicator is provided for each combination of site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • Information panel lists sites selected by site-type group and active/inactive status.
      • Selecting a site from the list will highlight it on the map.
      • List of sites can be sorted by contents of any column, including site number or site name.
  • Hydrographs can now be easily shared via various social media
  • Standalone graphs now support startDt and endDt URL arguments, rather than just a period of days from the present. This complements the ability of the site to serve instantaneous values since October 1, 2007. (PR 28163)
  • Bug fixes
    • New parameters:
      • 00129, Precipitation intensity
      • 65231, Biological,  Chlorophyll a, water, in situ, in vivo fluorescence, micrograms per liter 479-61-8, Chlorophyll a, ug/l
    • We put back an option to enter the period (number of days from now) rather than use calendar controls to see a list or get a graph of instantaneous values for a site (PR 27580 & 28190).
    • A blank graph will appear rather than an error message if there are no values within the default or requested date range (PR 27671).
    • Latitudes for sites selected with a latitude/longitude box are no longer one degree off requested latitude (PR 27781)
    • Graphs with embedded site names that contain apostrophes now display the site name correctly (PR 27798)
    • Operational parameters now generally show 120 days instead of 30 days of data (PR 28197)
    • "Eqp" is now showing for equipment instead of "_Eqp" in output of tab-delimited instantaneous data (PR 27816)
    • Data availability statement is now public (PR 27835) and was clarified with additional information (PR 27886)
    • Alaska and Hawaii are now included as a watershed regions in the mapper (PR 28114)
    • Counts for historical sites now appear instead of question marks at the state level. (PR 28175)

Web services (waterservices.usgs.gov)

  • Discrete Groundwater Levels Web Service - You can use this new service to retrieve historical manually-recorded groundwater levels from hydrologic sites served by the USGS. The archive of these measurements is vast and spans many decades.
    • Data can be downloaded in WaterML 1.1, JSON or as tab-delimited (RDB) files
    • All requests must specify one of the following major filters:
      • A list of sites
      • A single state or territory
      • A major (2-digit) or up to ten minor (8-digit) hydrologic unit codes
      • A latitude/longitude bounding box not to exceed a total of 25 degrees
      • A list of counties
    • Minor filters include:
      • By date of measurement (start date, end date or period from now)
      • Site status
      • USGS parameter code of interest
      • Groundwater site type
      • Agency code
      • Site altitude (maximum and/or minimum)
      • Well depth (maximum and/or minimum)
      • Hole depth (maximum and/or minimum)
      • List of national aquifer codes
      • List of local aquifer codes
  • Bugs fixed
    • Time zone offset now appears in WaterML and JSON outputs for the Instantaneous Values service (PR 27972)
    • Fixed a problem with data that disappeared during the time shift to DST in the Instantaneous Values Service (PR 27868)