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Waterfalls and Rapids in the Conterminous United States Linked to the National Hydrography Datasets V2.0

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

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.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/8fca3777d9484c433be6a7e1ceeab6de
Identifier USGS:5e8d2b5982cee42d13466001
Data Last Modified 20200827
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id d0fd2ef6-2535-48bf-833d-3d727326a346
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -124.7227,28.9584,-67.1281,48.9932
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 455356e541f0d5fdf0a91a0a5764ef9d8f15e14a9c785ec34aff002c00e6c540
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -124.7227, 28.9584, -124.7227, 48.9932, -67.1281, 48.9932, -67.1281, 28.9584, -124.7227, 28.9584}

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