You are here:
Development of the StreamCat Web Services
Citation:
Weber, M., Ryan A Hill, A. Brookes, S. Leibowitz, D. Rebhuhn, AND J. Peters. Development of the StreamCat Web Services. National Monitoring Conference, Virginia Beach, VA, April 24 - 28, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
EPA's StreamCat web application is an easy-to-use and web app that provides access to the StreamCat dataset, an extensive database of landscape metrics for the local drainage areas (catchments) and full watersheds for ~2.65 million stream segments within the conterminous United States (U.S.). EPA scientists developed the StreamCat web app to help the broad community of federal, local, state, academic, and non-governmental organaziations that utilize StreamCat data to more easily and programmatically access this data. The user community for StreamCat data is broad and this application will fill a growing need for easier access and sharing of the data (there are currently 163 citations in Google Scholar for the StreamCat dataset).
Description:
The Office of Research and Development (ORD) Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA) recently deployed an application programming interface (API) and underlying database that provides access to StreamCat, an extensive dataset of landscape metrics for the local drainage areas (catchments) and full watersheds for ~2.65 million stream segments within the conterminous United States (U.S.) based on the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 2. The StreamCat data reduces the specialized geospatial expertise needed by researchers and managers to acquire landscape information for both catchments (i.e., the nearby landscape flowing directly into streams) and full upstream watersheds of specific stream reaches, and development of the API further enhances the usability of this valuable dataset. EPA scientists developed the StreamCat API to help the broad community of federal, local, state, academic, and non-governmental organizations that use StreamCat data to more easily and programmatically access this data. The user community for StreamCat data is broad and this application will fill a growing need for easier access and sharing of the data. We demonstrate the components of the API and practical applications of leveraging this rich dataset in a programmatic, scalable fashion, and introduce an R package, StreamCatTools, that contains a number of functions facilitating the use of the API to work with the StreamCat data within the R programming environment.