Mapping Services
Description
WATERS exposes several mapping services that provide access to numerous datasets. This web page describes the content and purpose of each mapping service.
Each service is provided in
ESRI proprietary formats
and
Open Geospatial Consortium
open standards formats to enable the display and query of spatial WATERS data.
Non-developers can utilize these services using a variety of mapping and GIS applications.
Using such tools, the WATERS mapping services can be used as a data source,
transparently integrated with other data sources such as shapefiles or geodatabase layers.
For developers, custom html-based web applications can be created that use standard web and mapping service syntax to make
requests for data in order to display maps or tabular information.
Environment

ArcGIS Server (9.3.1) Based
ArcMap Based Map Document
For convenience, WATERS provides a preconfigured ArcMAP based map document (MXD) that contains pointers to the available ArcGIS based WATERS datasets. The MXD utilizes the NAD83 MapServer services and requires the use of ESRI ArcMap 9.2 (or greater). WATERS also offers the WATERKMZ files that are KML (Google Earth) based documents.| Download |
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| WATERSGEO_SERVICES.mxd   |
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| Formats | |||||||
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| Service Name | Map Server | OGC WFS | OGC WMS | KML Server | REST | Cache | Description |
| NHD_Med_Basic_Reached_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reachable features of the medium resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD). This service is specifically set up to support consumers that are indexing or viewing the results of indexing to the NHD. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| NHD_Med_Basic_WMERC |
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Provides access to surface waters NHD features including Major Rivers and Major Waterbodies along with the medium resolution NHD. | |
| NHD_Med_Detailed_NAD83 |
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Provides access to surface waters NHD features including Major Rivers and Major Waterbodies, medium resolution NHD, and provides labeling. | ||
| NHD_Med_Detailed_WMERC |
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Provides access to the medium resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| NHDPlus_Catchments_Smoothed_NAD83 |
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Provides access to the
NHDPlus
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| NHDPlus_Catchments_Smoothed_WMERC |
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Provides access to the
NHDPlus
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| WBD_NAD83 |
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Provides access to NRCS HUC2, HUC4, HUC6, HUC8, HUC10 and HUC12 polygons for the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD). | ||
| WBD_WMERC |
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Provides access to NRCS HUC2, HUC4, HUC6, HUC8, HUC10 and HUC12 polygons for the Watershed Boundary Dataset. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| LEGACYWBD_NAD83 |
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Provides access to Legacy HUC2, HUC4, HUC6 and HUC8 polygons for the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD). | ||
| LEGACYWBD_WMERC |
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Provides access to Generalized Legacy HUC2, HUC4, HUC6 and HUC8 polygons for the Watershed Boundary Dataset. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
OWRAD
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| Service Name | Map Server | OGC WFS | OGC WMS | KML Server | REST | Cache | Description |
| ALL_OWRAD_NAD83 |
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Provides a centralized service that exposes all the reach addressed layers in one service.. | ||
| 303D_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed ATTAINS 303(d) impaired waters data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| 305B_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed ATTAINS 305(b) Assessed waters data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| BEACH_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Beaches data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection.. | |
| CBR_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) Benefits Reporting data in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| CSO_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| CWNS_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Clean Water Needs Survey (CWNS) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| FISH_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Fish Consumption Advisories (FCA) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| FSHTD_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Fish Tissue Samples (FTS) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| GRTS_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed nonpoint source project data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| NDZ_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed sewage No-Discharge Zones (NDZ) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| PCS_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Facilities that Discharge to Water data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| TMDL_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Total Maximum Daily Loads data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
| WQS_WMERC |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Water Quality Standards (WQS) data stored in WATERS. This service is pre-projected in the Web Mercator projection. | |
ArcGIS Usage Notes
- WATERS data is served in both the NAD83 (_NAD83) and Web Mercator projections (_WMERC). Services are postfixed with either _WMERC or _NAD83 to indicate their purpose.
- Caching - WATERS services utilize caching to optimize server performance. Caching is a process whereby cartographies are prerendered at specific scales and stored as small images or tiles. These small images may be provided to web clients much faster than rendering the cartography on demand. Both on demand and pre-caching strategies are used for Web Mercator based services. WATERS will continue to enhance and build out the cache in strategic areas.
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Symbology - WATERS is continually reevaluating WATERS dataset styles.
The cartography of the services is still a work in progress.
Efforts are underway to resemble the cartography of both the
USGS NHD SLD
and ESRI's upcoming NHDPlus base map.
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Keyhole Markup Language - Some _WMERC services contain Layers with a (KML) postfix.
These layers are specifically configured to serve KML clients by working around symbology limitations inherent in the format.
See the KML specification
for more information on the types of symbology available using KML services.
ArcIMS Server (9.2) Based - Phasing out 04/30/2010
| Formats | |||||
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| Service Name | ArcIMS Image | ArcIMS Feature | OGC WMS |
OGC WFS | Descriptionn |
| NHD_Layers |
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Provides access to the medium resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) stored in WATERS. |
| NHDPlus_Smoothed_Catchments |
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Provides access to the
NHDPlus
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| RADBasic |
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Provides access to a comprehensive collection of WATERS-related data. This service is similar in content to the RADDetailed service, but does not contain the level of detailed thematic layer symbology. This enhances drawing performance and provides a smaller, simpler legend. This service is appropriate for users who do not need the detailed symbology, or for developers who may be assigning their own symbology definitions. |
| RADDetailed |
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Provides access to a comprehensive collection of WATERS-related data, with detailed thematic symbology that aligns with EnviroMapper for Water symbology. |
| RAD_evt_303d |
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Provides access to the reach addressed ATTAINS 303(d) impaired waters data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_305b |
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Provides access to the reach addressed ATTAINS 305(b) Assessed waters data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_beach |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Beaches data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_cso |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_cwns |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Clean Water Needs Survey (CWNS) data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_fish |
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Provides access to the reach addressed fish data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_grts |
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Provides access to the reach addressed nonpoint source project data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_ndz |
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Provides access to the reach addressed sewage No-Discharge Zones (NDZ) data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_pcs |
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Provides access to the reach addressed facilities that discharge data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_tmdl |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Total Maximum Daily Loads data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_wqs |
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Provides access to the reach addressed Water Quality Standards (WQS) data stored in WATERS. |
| RAD_evt_Layers |
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Provides access to all of the reach addressed layers in one service. |
| WBD |
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Provides access to current NRCS HUC2, HUC4, HUC6, HUC8, HUC10 and HUC12 polygons for the Watershed Boundary Dataset. |
ArcIMS Usage Notes
- WATERS will be phasing out ArcIMS support on 04/30/2010.
- Due to a flaw in the ArcIMS product (reference #NIM013532), the existing RAD datasets cannot be provided as Feature Services if they contain date columns without values. To work around this problem and continue to provide feature capabilities, RAD ArcIMS services have been altered to assign a "fictitious" date value of 02/29/1904 to any date which normally is empty. Fields affected are EVENTDATE, REACHSMDATE, CYCLE and START_DATE. Please consider any instances of the date 02/29/1904 to be equal to NULL.
- Image and Feature Services are registered with appropriate indentifying suffixes. Images services are identified in the ArcIMS server services list with a _IMAGE suffix on the service name. Feature services are identified in the ArcIMS server services list with a _FEATURE suffix on the service name.
Service Formats
| Format | Support | Description |
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| ArcIMS Image | ArcIMS | Service format provided by ESRI corporation through their ArcIMS product. Requests and responses are formatted using ESRI's ArcXML SOAP-like commands with the cartographic results provided as an image to the client. All ESRI client products are able to utilize this format. |
| ArcIMS Feature | ArcIMS | Service format provided by ESRI corporation through their ArcIMS product. Requests and responses are formatted using ESRI's ArcXML SOAP-like commands with the cartographic results provided as vector features to the client. Most ESRI client products are able to utilize this format. Note that this type of service may be slower than the equivalent image service depending on the number and complexity of features in the service layer. |
| OGC WMS (Web Mapping Service) | ArcIMS, ArcGIS |
Open standards service format defined by the
Open Geospatial Consortium
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| OGC WFS (Web Feature Service) | ArcIMS, ArcGIS | Open standards service format defined by the
Open Geospatial Consortium
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| MapServer | ArcGIS |
Service format provided by ESRI corporation through their ArcGIS product.
Requests are formatted as
SOAP
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| KMLServer | ArcGIS |
Open standards service format defined by the
Open Geospatial Consortium
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| REST | ArcGIS | Representational State Transfer (REST), provides a simple, open Web interface to services hosted by ArcGIS Server. All resources and operations exposed by the REST API are accessible through a hierarchy of endpoints or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for each GIS service published with ArcGIS Server. |
Metadata
EPA mapping services are described and their access endpoints detailed via their entries at the
Geospatial One-Stop
.
Search for the service name above to discover metadata and access information regarding the service on federal government public servers.
Please note, the WATERS team is currently evaluating additional ways to expose metadata in an easier manner.
Changelog
Version: 2.2 - Released: December 30, 2009
- Added State and Region based Bookmarks
- Added link to ESRI World Shaded Relief layer
- Other miscellaneous changes
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