This data release provides coupling of Conterminous United States and several Canadian operational reservoirs used in recent hydrologic modeling studies to authoritative national hydrographic datasets used to identify, calibrate, model, and assess streamflow, water quantity, quality, and ecological resources. The National Inventory of Dams (NID) provides linkages to dams operated in the United States, GRanD provides linkages to Global Dams and Reservoirs, and the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) provides linkages to the stream network and waterbodies to easily couple with National Hydrologic Models and landscape parameters. The Geospatial Fabric for National Hydrologic Modeling, version 1.1 (GFv1.1) provides linkages to existing National Hydrologic Model (NHM) spatial modeling units. All crosswalks, linkages, and other information is provided in a comma-separated value (csv) file.

This GeoJSON dataset contains information about 10780 waterfall and 1080 rapid locations (referred to as falls throughout the metadata) and characteristics (e.g. type and height) for the conterminous United States. This dataset centralizes known information about falls while providing basic quality control (i.e. resolving duplicate records and spatial accuracy checks) and linkages to stream networks intended to facilitate stream network analyses. Locations of falls were sourced from the World Waterfall Database (WWD, www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com), the US Forest Service Center for Aquatic Technology Transfer (acquired from Southeast Aquatic Barrier Inventory), and Geographic Names Information System (GNIS, https://geonames.usgs.gov). The coordinates and spatial attributes from source data were used to verify locations using The HydroLink Tool (https://maps.usgs.gov/hydrolink). The HydroLink Tool was also used to address locations (similar to the concept of street addresses) to both the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Medium Resolution Version 2.1 (1:100,000 scale)(NHDPlusV2.1) and National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (1:24,000 scale)(NHD HR) geospatial stream networks. The development of this dataset did not impose strict fall definitions but instead compiled qualified falls as defined by sources while capturing characteristics when available to help users identify falls of interest for any given use case. More specifically there is a gradation of waterfalls represented in the dataset where general fall types are defined by source datasets but are not standardized by USGS staff.

This GeoJSON dataset contains information about 10780 waterfall and 1080 rapid locations (referred to as falls throughout the metadata) and characteristics (e.g. type and height) for the conterminous United States. This dataset centralizes known information about falls while providing basic quality control (i.e. resolving duplicate records and spatial accuracy checks) and linkages to stream networks intended to facilitate stream network analyses. Locations of falls were sourced from the World Waterfall Database (WWD, www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com), the US Forest Service Center for Aquatic Technology Transfer (acquired from Southeast Aquatic Barrier Inventory), and Geographic Names Information System (GNIS, https://geonames.usgs.gov). The coordinates and spatial attributes from source data were used to verify locations using The HydroLink Tool (https://maps.usgs.gov/hydrolink). The HydroLink Tool was also used to address locations (similar to the concept of street addresses) to both the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Medium Resolution Version 2.1 (1:100,000 scale)(NHDPlusV2.1) and National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (1:24,000 scale)(NHD HR) geospatial stream networks. The development of this dataset did not impose strict fall definitions but instead compiled qualified falls as defined by sources while capturing characteristics when available to help users identify falls of interest for any given use case. More specifically there is a gradation of waterfalls represented in the dataset where general fall types are defined by source datasets but are not standardized by USGS staff.

This tabular data set contains decadal information on dams 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 for dam information was produced by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The information provided here contains the number of dams (both major and minor), dam storage (acre feet) and decade of construction compiled as described above. 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 contains decadal information on dams 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 for dam information was produced by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The information provided here contains the number of dams (both major and minor), dam storage (acre feet) and decade of construction compiled as described above. 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 USGS data release includes a comma separated value (CSV) file that contains 19 reach-based dam metrics representing stream fragmentation and flow alteration for nearly 2.3 million stream reaches in the conterminous United States. Dam metrics fall into three main categories: count and density, distance-based, and cumulative reservoir storage (described below). These data were developed using spatially verified large dam locations (n=49,140) primarily from the National Anthropogenic Barrier Dataset (NABD) 2012 that were spatially linked to the National Hydrography Dataset Plus version 2.1 (NHDPlusV2.1). These dam metrics have been summarized using the unique identifier field native to the NHDPlusV2.1 (COMID) which can be used to join this table to spatial layers and data tables of the NHDPlusV2.1. Non-fluvial features representing lakes and reservoirs in the NHDPlusV2.1 are included (~300,000 features), however coastlines are excluded. For more details see the associated publication: Cooper, A.R., Infante, D.M., Daniel, W.M., Wehrly, K.E., Wang, L., Brenden, T.O. 2017. Assessment of dam effects for streams and fish assemblages of the conterminous USA. Science of the Total Environment https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.02.067

This CSV file contains 21 dam metrics representing stream fragmentation and flow alteration for nearly 2.3 million stream reaches in the conterminous USA. Dam metrics fall into four main categories: segment-based, count and density, distance-based, and cumulative reservoir storage (described below). These data were developed using spatially verified large dam locations (n=49,468) primarily from the National Anthropogenic Barrier Dataset (NABD) that were spatially linked to the National Hydrography Dataset Plus version 1 (NHDPlusV1). These dam metrics have been summarized using the unique identifier field native to the NHDPlusV1 (COMID) which can be used to join this table to spatial layers and data tables of the NHDPlusV1. Non-fluvial features in the NHDPlusV1 (lake and reservoir flow paths, coastlines, etc.) are excluded (see NFHP metadata). Please contact Arthur Cooper (coopera@msu.edu) for a copy of the publication associated with this data: Cooper, A.R., Infante, D.M., Daniel, W.M., Wehrly, K.E., Wang, L., Brenden, T.O. 2017. Assessment of dam effects for streams and fish assemblages of the conterminous USA. Science of the Total Environment doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.02.067

This USGS data release includes a comma separated value (CSV) file that contains 19 reach-based dam metrics representing stream fragmentation and flow alteration for nearly 2.3 million stream reaches in the conterminous United States. Dam metrics fall into three main categories: count and density, distance-based, and cumulative reservoir storage (described below). These data were developed using spatially verified large dam locations (n=49,140) primarily from the National Anthropogenic Barrier Dataset (NABD) 2012 that were spatially linked to the National Hydrography Dataset Plus version 2.1 (NHDPlusV2.1). These dam metrics have been summarized using the unique identifier field native to the NHDPlusV2.1 (COMID) which can be used to join this table to spatial layers and data tables of the NHDPlusV2.1. Non-fluvial features representing lakes and reservoirs in the NHDPlusV2.1 are included (~300,000 features), however coastlines are excluded. For more details see the associated publication: Cooper, A.R., Infante, D.M., Daniel, W.M., Wehrly, K.E., Wang, L., Brenden, T.O. 2017. Assessment of dam effects for streams and fish assemblages of the conterminous USA. Science of the Total Environment https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.02.067

This metadata record describes two metrics that quantitatively measure the impact of reservoir storage on every flowline in the NHDPlus version 2 data suite (NHDPlusV2) for the conterminous United States. These metrics are computed for every 10 years from 1800 - 2015. The first metric (DamIndex_EROM.zip) estimates reservoir storage intensity in units of days based on reservoir storage in a contributing area normalized by the mean annual streamflow. This metric indicates the duration of storage impact upstream from each stream segment relative to the typical flow condition. In addition, this metric provides an assessment of the potential influence of a dam on average and low flows because the metric estimates the number of days of flow that can be sustained by contributing area storage alone, without additional water or groundwater input. The second metric (DamIndex_PMC.zip) represents the degree of regulation of a river reach based on upstream reservoir storage relative to the 30-year average annual precipitation, as well as the upstream dam and watershed areas. This second metric provides an estimate of the capacity of the contributing area to store precipitation and is oriented to understanding how peak flows may be affected by dams throughout the flow network; this metric is dimensionless. Reservoir storage, construction date and location data were obtained from the US Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams (NID, 2018). Also, the dataset in this data release includes dam locations addressed to NHDPlusv2 (Final_NID_2018.zip). These calculations are based on the maximum NID storage , which indicates the maximum amount of water that can be stored behind each dam and therefore may overestimate the true reservoir storage impacts.