aid: usgs-water name: USGS Water Services description: >- The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) exposes a suite of REST APIs providing access to real-time and historical water data from over 1.5 million monitoring locations across the United States and territories. The legacy WaterServices APIs (being decommissioned in early 2027) and the next-generation api.waterdata.usgs.gov OGC-compliant APIs together cover streamflow, groundwater levels, water quality, site metadata, and statistical summaries. All services are free, publicly funded, and require no authentication for standard use; API keys are available at no cost for higher rate-limit access. type: Index image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg access: Public created: '2026-06-13' modified: '2026-06-13' position: Producer url: >- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/usgs-water/refs/heads/main/apis.yml specificationVersion: '0.19' tags: - Water - Streamflow - Groundwater - Water Quality - Hydrology - Environmental - USGS - NWIS - Government - Open Data - OGC apis: - aid: usgs-water:instantaneous-values name: USGS Instantaneous Values Service description: >- Provides near real-time water data — streamflow, gage height, temperature, specific conductance, and hundreds of other parameters — from thousands of USGS monitoring sites. Values are typically recorded every 15 minutes and transmitted hourly. Data is available from October 1, 2007 onwards and is marked provisional until reviewed. humanURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/instantaneous-values/instantaneous-values-details/ baseURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/ tags: - Real-Time - Streamflow - Gage Height - Water Parameters - Time Series properties: - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/instantaneous-values/instantaneous-values-details/ - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:daily-values name: USGS Daily Values Service description: >- Returns historical summarized daily hydrologic data (mean, median, maximum, minimum) for streams, lakes, estuaries, and wells. Many sites have more than 10 years of record. Supports WaterML 1.1, WaterML 2.0, RDB (tab-delimited), and JSON output formats. humanURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/dv-service/daily-values-service-details/ baseURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/dv/ tags: - Daily Values - Historical Data - Streamflow - Hydrology - WaterML properties: - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/dv-service/daily-values-service-details/ - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:site-service name: USGS Site Service description: >- Searches and retrieves metadata for millions of USGS hydrologic data collection sites including streams, springs, wells, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and glaciers. Filtering options include site number, state, HUC, bounding box, county, site type, and parameter codes. Outputs include tab-delimited, KML, and GeoJSON. humanURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/site-service-details/ baseURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ tags: - Site Metadata - Monitoring Locations - Geospatial - NWIS properties: - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/site-service-details/ - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:statistics-service name: USGS Statistics Service description: >- Retrieves daily, monthly, or annual statistics (mean, minimum, maximum, median, and percentiles P05–P95) computed from approved historical time-series data. Supports up to 10 sites per request and returns data in RDB tab-delimited format. humanURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/statistics/statistics-details/ baseURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/stats/ tags: - Statistics - Percentiles - Historical - Streamflow - Approved Data properties: - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/statistics/statistics-details/ - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:groundwater-levels name: USGS Groundwater Levels Service description: >- Provides historical manually-recorded groundwater level measurements from USGS wells and monitoring sites. Returns depth-to-water and water-level-above-datum values in JSON or RDB format. For automated real-time groundwater data, the Instantaneous Values Service should be used. humanURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/groundwater-levels/groundwater-levels-details/ baseURL: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/gwlevels/ tags: - Groundwater - Water Levels - Wells - Aquifers - Historical properties: - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/groundwater-levels/groundwater-levels-details/ - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:ogc-continuous-values name: USGS OGC Continuous Values API description: >- Next-generation OGC API compliant service (api.waterdata.usgs.gov) providing real-time continuous sensor measurements including streamflow, gage height, and hundreds of other parameters. Implements OGC API – Features standard with CQL2 filtering, spatial bounding-box queries, and temporal filtering. Supports JSON, HTML, CSV, and JSON-LD output formats. humanURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ baseURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/collections/continuous tags: - Real-Time - OGC - Streamflow - Continuous Data - Next Generation properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ - type: OpenAPI url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/openapi?f=json - type: Website url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:ogc-daily-values name: USGS OGC Daily Values API description: >- OGC API compliant service for historical summarized daily water data with derived statistics. Part of the next-generation USGS Water Data API platform replacing the legacy WaterServices (slated for decommission in early 2027). Supports CQL2 filtering, geospatial queries, and multiple output formats. humanURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ baseURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/collections/daily tags: - Daily Values - OGC - Historical - Next Generation properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ - type: OpenAPI url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/openapi?f=json - type: Website url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:ogc-monitoring-locations name: USGS OGC Monitoring Locations API description: >- OGC API compliant service providing location details, geographic data, and site identifiers for USGS monitoring stations. Returns rich metadata including site type, drainage area, altitude, aquifer codes, and active parameter inventory. humanURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ baseURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/collections/monitoring-locations tags: - Monitoring Locations - Site Metadata - Geospatial - OGC properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ - type: OpenAPI url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ogcapi/v0/openapi?f=json - type: Website url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ - aid: usgs-water:water-quality-portal name: Water Quality Portal (WQP) API description: >- A cooperative service sponsored by USGS and EPA providing access to water quality data from over 400 agencies including USGS NWIS and EPA WQX. Endpoints cover monitoring sites, chemistry results, biological metrics, activity data, and detection limits. Supports spatial, temporal, characteristic, and organizational filters. Output formats include CSV, TSV, XLSX, XML, GeoJSON, KML, and KMZ. humanURL: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/webservices_documentation/ baseURL: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/data/ tags: - Water Quality - EPA - Chemistry - Biology - Monitoring - Multi-Agency properties: - type: Documentation url: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/webservices_documentation/ - type: Website url: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/ - aid: usgs-water:statistics-next-gen name: USGS Water Data Statistics API description: >- Next-generation statistics API at api.waterdata.usgs.gov providing computed statistical summaries for USGS water time series. Part of the platform replacing the legacy WaterServices statistics endpoint. humanURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/statistics/v0/docs baseURL: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/statistics/v0/ tags: - Statistics - Next Generation - Time Series properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/statistics/v0/docs - type: Website url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ common: - type: Website url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/ - type: Website url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/ - type: Documentation url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/ - type: Documentation url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/docs/ - type: SignUp url: https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/signup/ - type: PrivacyPolicy url: https://www.doi.gov/privacy - type: TermsOfService url: https://www.usgs.gov/information-policies-and-instructions/copyrights-and-credits - type: Contact url: mailto:wdfn@usgs.gov - type: StatusPage url: https://waterservices.usgs.gov/test-tools/ - type: Plans url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/usgs-water/refs/heads/main/plans/usgs-water-plans.yml - type: RateLimits url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/usgs-water/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/usgs-water-rate-limits.yml - type: FinOps url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/usgs-water/refs/heads/main/finops/usgs-water-finops.yml maintainers: - FN: Kin Lane email: kin@apievangelist.com