Web Tools

Hurricane Irma, the most intense hurricane observed in the Atlantic in the last decade, approached the west coast of Florida on September 10th, 2017. This Hurricane Irma Water Footprint data visualization animates the hurricane's path, cumulative precipitation, and its impact on river gage height.

Hurricane Harvey approached the U.S. Gulf coast on August 25, 2017. The Hurricane Harvey Water Footprint data visualization shows the hurricane's impact on precipitation and streamflow.

Hurricane Matthew approached the southeastern U.S. coast on October 7, 2016. This is a data visualization that shows the hurricane's impact on precipitation and streamflow.

Microplastics, plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter, are a contaminant of emerging concern in aquatic environments. This interactive visualization explores classifications and potential sources of microplastics in the Great Lakes.

Since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has been experiencing a historic, extended drought that has impacted regional water supply and other resources, such as hydropower, recreation, and ecologic services. This visualization is part of a multi-agency effort to showcase the usefulness of open data by exploring the current 16-year drought and its effects on the Colorado River Basin.

In 2017, the State of California was experiencing one of the most severe droughts on record, which has implications for citizens of California and beyond. This website graphically visualizes these data to help understand the effect of drought on rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs.

The U.S. Geological Survey compiles water-use estimates every five years for each State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Archived datasets underlying the published "Estimated Use of Water in the United States" reports are available from the above link. County data incorporating any revisions can be found on NWISWeb.

The following graphs show water surface elevations above NGVD 1929 in selected reservoirs for several years, including 2015. The purpose of these graphs is to compare water surface elevations during 2015 with water surface elevations observed during years when documented droughts have occurred.

The USGS monitors current streamflow and water-quality conditions at various sites in the Animas and San Juan River Basins in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, including areas below the Gold King Mine release area. These streamgages provide continuous data on streamflow and select water-quality constituents including specific conductance, water temperature, pH, and turbidity.

This tool produces shapefiles that contain the delineated basins, basin characteristics, and flow statistics for multiple sites requested at once by users. Before this tool can be used, the the points of interest will likely need to be edited in GIS so that they are coincident with the stream grid used by StreamStats for delineations and saved to a shapefile. 

The StreamStats application uses data web services that were created for it. When in use, the application manages interactions between the user and the services. However, the web services can be directly accessed using the StreamStats Service API documented here or consumed by a custom client application using HTTP protocols.

The Health-Based Screening Levels for Evaluating Water-Quality Data searchable online database provides Health-Based Screening Levels (HBSLs) for hundreds of chemicals, including pesticides and degradates. HBSLs are non-enforceable benchmark concentrations of contaminants in water. These screening levels supplement federal drinking-water standards and guidelines.