USGS Water Services

About USGS Water Services

USGS Water Services provides United States Geological Survey water data through REST APIs in machine-readable formats. It comprises several distinct services: an Instantaneous Values Service for current streamflow, gage height, and other real-time data at one or multiple locations; a Statistics Service for daily, monthly, or annual statistics on approved time-series data; a Site Service for searching USGS sites with output in tab-delimited and KML formats; a Daily Values Service for historical summarized daily data (mean, median, maximum, minimum, and other derived values) on streams, lakes, and wells; and Water Quality Services, developed jointly with the EPA, for retrieving quality-checked water quality samples and results.

The site includes documentation for each service and web forms for building and testing queries against each endpoint.

The service is scheduled for decommissioning in early 2027, with applications expected to migrate to APIs hosted at api.waterdata.usgs.gov.

Key features

• Retrieve current streamflow, gage height, and real-time data via the Instantaneous Values Service
• Retrieve daily, monthly, or annual site statistics on approved time-series data
• Search USGS sites and site information with flexible filters, output as tab-delimited or KML
• Access historical daily data (mean, median, max, min) for streams, lakes, and wells
• Retrieve water quality sample and result data jointly developed with the EPA

Frequently asked questions