USDA Geospatial Data Gateway
USDA NRCS one-stop portal providing over 100 high-resolution geospatial data layers including soil surveys, hydrography, watershed boundaries, and precipitation data updated weekly
datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov
At a glance
- Region
- United States (North America)
- Coverage
- National (100+ data layers)
- Access
- Free
- Category
- Government
What's inside
- Soil Survey
- Hydrography
- Hydrologic Units
- Watershed Boundaries
- Precipitation
Terms explained
What you can do with it
Typical work that data of this type supports.
- 01
Design storms
Build rainfall intensity-duration-frequency curves for drainage design.
Because it has: Precipitation
- 02
Model input
Drive hydrological, crop and urban drainage models.
- 03
Design flows
Estimate 1-in-50 and 1-in-100 year floods for bridges, culverts and spillways.
Because it has: Hydrologic Units
Where AI adds value
Ideas for machine learning and AI agents built on this kind of data.
- 01
Downscaling
Turn coarse rainfall grids into field or ward scale estimates.
- 02
Gauge + satellite fusion
Correct satellite rainfall with gauges using machine learning.
- 03
Flow forecasting
Train LSTM-style models on past records to forecast river levels and flow days ahead.
Machine access and documentation
Open API
USDA NRCS GDG WMS/WFS data layers
Licence: US federal public domain
Listed in our registry of open water APIs, which WaterDataGPT can query live.
Related water data
- Florida DEP Geospatial Open DataNorth America | Free
- High Plains Regional Climate Center Online Data ServicesNorth America | Free
- Nevada Division of Water Resources Open DataNorth America | Free
- NRCS SCAN - Soil Climate Analysis NetworkNorth America | Free
- TexMesonet (Texas Water Development Board)North America | Free
- Utah Open Water DataNorth America | Free
Find more water data
Search and compare 1,900+ water data sources by region, type and access.