whatNWISdata {dataRetrieval}

USGS data availability

Description

Imports a table of available parameters, period of record, and count. See https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/ for more information.

Usage

whatNWISdata(..., convertType = TRUE)

Arguments

...

see https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/ for a complete list of options. A list of arguments can also be supplied.

convertType

logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to dates, datetimes, numerics based on a standard algorithm. If false, everything is returned as a character

Details

This function requires users to create their own arguments based on the NWIS web services. It is a more complicated function to use compared to other NWIS functions such as readNWISdv, readNWISuv, etc. However, this function adds a lot of flexibility to the possible queries. If the "service" argument is included, the results will be filtered to the proper data_type_cd. This is a great function to use before a large data set, by filtering down the number of sites that have useful data.

Value

A data frame with the following columns:

Name	Type	Description
agency_cd	character	The NWIS code for the agency reporting the data
site_no	character	The USGS site number
station_nm	character	Site name
site_tp_cd	character	Site type
dec_lat_va	numeric	Decimal latitude
dec_long_va	numeric	Decimal longitude
coord_acy_cd	character	Latitude-longitude accuracy
dec_coord_datum_cd	character	Decimal Latitude-longitude datum
alt_va	character	Altitude of Gage or land surface
alt_acy_va	character	Altitude accuracy
alt_datum_cd	character	Altitude datum
huc_cd	character	Hydrologic unit code
data_type_cd	character	Data type
parm_cd	character	Parameter code
stat_cd	character	Statistical code
dd_nu	character	Internal database key
loc_web_ds	character	Additional measurement description
medium_grp_cd	character	Medium group code
parm_grp_cd	character	Parameter group code
srs_id	character	SRS ID
access_cd	character	Access code
begin_date	Date	Begin date
end_date	Date	End date
count_nu	integer	Record count
parameter_group_nm	character	Parameter group name
parameter_nm	character	Parameter name
casrn	character	Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Registry Number
srsname	character	Substance Registry Services
parameter_units	character	Parameter units

There are also several useful attributes attached to the data frame:

Name	Type	Description
url	character	The url used to generate the data
comment	character	Header comments from the RDB file
queryTime	POSIXct	The time the data was returned

Examples

availableData <- whatNWISdata(siteNumber = "05114000")

# To find just unit value ('instantaneous') data:
uvData <- whatNWISdata(siteNumber = "05114000",
                       service = "uv")
uvDataMulti <- whatNWISdata(siteNumber = c("05114000", "09423350"),
                            service = c("uv", "dv"))
flowAndTemp <- whatNWISdata(
  stateCd = "WI", service = "uv",
  parameterCd = c("00060", "00010"),
  statCd = "00003"
)
sites <- whatNWISdata(stateCd = "WI",
                      parameterCd = "00060",
                      siteType = "ST", 
                      service = "site")