U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior - The annual Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) stewardship plan is to maintain watershed boundary data through usage of WBD edit tools over the United States and its territories. WBD for the Nation has been collected and is now in maintenance mode. Interested parties who wish to become a stewardship partner with the USGS in FY20 or in future years should contact a USGS Geospatial Liaison - https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/user-engagement-office. To find out more about watershed boundary stewardship go to https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/national-hydrography/watershed-boundary-dataset

The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) is a feature-based database that interconnects and uniquely identifies the stream segments or reaches that make up the nation's surface water drainage system. NHD data was originally developed at 1:100,000 scale and exists at that scale for the whole country. High resolution NHD adds detail to the original 1:100,000-scale NHD. (Data for Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands was developed at high-resolution, not 1:100,000 scale.) Like the 1:100,000-scale NHD, high resolution NHD contains reach codes for networked features and isolated lakes, flow direction, names, stream level, and centerline representations for areal water bodies. Reaches are also defined to represent waterbodies and the approximate shorelines of the Great Lakes, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The NHD also incorporates the National Spatial Data Infrastructure framework criteria set out by the Federal Geographic Data Committee.

The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) is a feature-based database that interconnects and uniquely identifies the stream segments or reaches that make up the nation's surface water drainage system. NHD data was originally developed at 1:100,000 scale and exists at that scale for the whole country. High resolution NHD adds detail to the original 1:100,000-scale NHD. (Data for Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands was developed at high-resolution, not 1:100,000 scale.) Like the 1:100,000-scale NHD, high resolution NHD contains reach codes for networked features and isolated lakes, flow direction, names, stream level, and centerline representations for areal water bodies. Reaches are also defined to represent waterbodies and the approximate shorelines of the Great Lakes, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The NHD also incorporates the National Spatial Data Infrastructure framework criteria set out by the Federal Geographic Data Committee.

This tabular data set represents the percent of Hydrologic Landscape Regions compiled for two spatial components of the NHDPlus version 2 data suite (NHDPlusv2) for the conterminous United States; 1) individual reach catchments and 2) reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network. This dataset can be linked to the NHDPlus version 2 data suite by the unique identifier COMID. The source data is the "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" produced by the United States Geological Survey (Wolock, 2003). Units are percent. The "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" are a 20-class classification scheme of noncontiguous regions (HLRs) built on the basis of similarities in land-surface form, geologic texture, and climate characteristics (Wolock, 2003). Reach catchment information characterizes data at the local scale. Reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network characterizes cumulative upstream conditions. Network-accumulated values are computed using two methods, 1) divergence-routed and 2) total cumulative drainage area. Both approaches use a modified routing database to navigate the NHDPlus reach network to aggregate (accumulate) the metrics derived from the reach catchment scale. (Schwarz and Wieczorek, 2018).

This tabular data set represents the percent of Hydrologic Landscape Regions compiled for two spatial components of the NHDPlus version 2 data suite (NHDPlusv2) for the conterminous United States; 1) individual reach catchments and 2) reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network. This dataset can be linked to the NHDPlus version 2 data suite by the unique identifier COMID. The source data is the "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" produced by the United States Geological Survey (Wolock, 2003). Units are percent. The "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" are a 20-class classification scheme of noncontiguous regions (HLRs) built on the basis of similarities in land-surface form, geologic texture, and climate characteristics (Wolock, 2003). Reach catchment information characterizes data at the local scale. Reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network characterizes cumulative upstream conditions. Network-accumulated values are computed using two methods, 1) divergence-routed and 2) total cumulative drainage area. Both approaches use a modified routing database to navigate the NHDPlus reach network to aggregate (accumulate) the metrics derived from the reach catchment scale. (Schwarz and Wieczorek, 2018).

This tabular data set represents the percent of Hydrologic Landscape Regions compiled for two spatial components of the NHDPlus version 2 data suite (NHDPlusv2) for the conterminous United States; 1) individual reach catchments and 2) reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network. This dataset can be linked to the NHDPlus version 2 data suite by the unique identifier COMID. The source data is the "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" produced by the United States Geological Survey (Wolock, 2003). Units are percent. The "Hydrologic landscape regions of the United States" are a 20-class classification scheme of noncontiguous regions (HLRs) built on the basis of similarities in land-surface form, geologic texture, and climate characteristics (Wolock, 2003). Reach catchment information characterizes data at the local scale. Reach catchments accumulated upstream through the river network characterizes cumulative upstream conditions. Network-accumulated values are computed using two methods, 1) divergence-routed and 2) total cumulative drainage area. Both approaches use a modified routing database to navigate the NHDPlus reach network to aggregate (accumulate) the metrics derived from the reach catchment scale. (Schwarz and Wieczorek, 2018).

The USGS National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) service from The National Map (TNM) is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that encodes information about naturally occurring and constructed bodies of surface water (lakes, ponds, and reservoirs), paths through which water flows (canals, ditches, streams, and rivers), and related entities such as point features (springs, wells, stream gages, and dams). The information encoded about these features includes classification and other characteristics, delineation, geographic name, position and related measures, a "reach code" through which other information can be related to the NHD, and the direction of water flow. The network of reach codes delineating water and transported material flow allows users to trace movement in upstream and downstream directions. In addition to this geographic information, the dataset contains metadata that supports the exchange of future updates and improvements to the data. The NHD is available nationwide in two seamless datasets, one based on 1:24,000-scale maps and referred to as high resolution NHD, and the other based on 1:100,000-scale maps and referred to as medium resolution NHD. Additional selected areas in the United States are available based on larger scales, such as 1:5,000-scale or greater, and referred to as local resolution NHD. The NHD from The National Map supports many applications, such as making maps, geocoding observations, flow modeling, data maintenance, and stewardship. For additional information on the NHD, go to https://nhd.usgs.gov/index.html. The Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) is a companion dataset to the NHD. It defines the perimeter of drainage areas formed by the terrain and other landscape characteristics. The drainage areas are nested within each other so that a large drainage area, such as the Upper Mississippi River, will be composed of multiple smaller drainage areas, such as the Wisconsin River. Each of these smaller areas can further be subdivided into smaller and smaller drainage areas. The WBD uses six different levels in this hierarchy, with the smallest averaging about 30,000 acres. The WBD is made up of polygons nested into six levels of data respectively defined by Regions, Subregions, Basins, Subbasins, Watersheds, and Subwatersheds. For additional information on the WBD, go to https://nhd.usgs.gov/wbd.html. The National Map hydrography data is commonly combined with other data themes, such as boundaries, elevation, structures, and transportation, to produce general reference base maps. The National Map viewer allows free downloads of public domain NHD and WBD data in either Esri File or Personal Geodatabase, or Shapefile formats.