A One Stop Shop for Water Data

The CUAHSI HIS is a unique sources for water data because it enables access to multiple data sources seamlessly through one portal. While many government agencies such as the USGS and EPA make water data available, prior to the development of HIS, these data were only available independent of one another and most often in different formats. The technology developed and implemented in the HIS enables a user to search across such independent government agency data sources, in addition to data sources from academic research community, at the same time.

Image Credit: Michael Piasecki

Since 2008, the number of data sources available to the public in the HIS has consistently grown. In 2008, there were only 28 sources of water data available in HIS. Today, there are 100 sources of data registered in HIS that are available publicly!

What are those data sources, you say? As you might imagine, they vary in scale, scope, and organization type (among other things!). Some examples of data sources are the aforementioned government agencies (USGS NWIS; EPA STORET),  non-profit citizen led groups like the Ipswich River Watershed Association, and academic researchers such as those involved in the Shale Network.

To find out exactly what sources are providing data, you can visit the HIS Central website. Here you can find metadata about each and every source of data available in HIS such as a description, contact information for the publishing organization  statistics, geographic coverage, and suggested citation for the data. Below you can see a screenshot of the page for the Ipswich River Watershed Association's RiverWatch program.