dataRetrieval (version 2.5.12)

readNWISmeas: Surface-water measurement data retrieval from USGS (NWIS)

Description

Reads surface-water measurement data from NWISweb. Data is retrieved from http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis. See http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/sw for details about surface water.

Usage

readNWISmeas(siteNumbers, startDate = "", endDate = "", tz = "", expanded = FALSE, convertType = TRUE)

Arguments

siteNumbers

character USGS site number (or multiple sites). This is usually an 8 digit number

startDate

character starting date for data retrieval in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Default is "" which indicates retrieval for the earliest possible record.

endDate

character ending date for data retrieval in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Default is "" which indicates retrieval for the latest possible record.

tz

character to set timezone attribute of dateTime. Default is an empty quote, which converts the dateTimes to UTC (properly accounting for daylight savings times based on the data's provided tz_cd column). Possible values to provide are "America/New_York","America/Chicago", "America/Denver","America/Los_Angeles", "America/Anchorage","America/Honolulu","America/Jamaica","America/Managua","America/Phoenix", and "America/Metlakatla"

expanded

logical. Whether or not (TRUE or FALSE) to call the expanded data.

convertType

logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to dates, datetimes, numerics based on a standard algorithm. If false, everything is returned as a character

Value

A data frame with at least the following columns:

Name	Type
Description	agency_cd
character	The NWIS code for the agency reporting the data
site_no	character
The USGS site number	measurement_dt
POSIXct	The date and time (in POSIXct) of the measurement. Unless specified with the tz parameter, this is converted to UTC. If the measurement_dt column is an incomplete, a measurement_dt_date and measurement_dt_time column are added to the returned data frame.
tz_cd	character
The time zone code for the measurement_dt column	Name

See http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/sw for details about surface water, and http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/help?output_formats_help#streamflow_measurement_data for help on the columns and codes.There are also several useful attributes attached to the data frame:

Name	Type
Description	url
character	The url used to generate the data
queryTime	POSIXct
The time the data was returned	comment
character	Header comments from the RDB file
siteInfo	data.frame
A data frame containing information on the requested sites	tz_cd_reported
The originally reported time zone	Name

See Also

constructNWISURL, importRDB1

Examples

siteNumbers <- c('01594440','040851325')
## Not run: 
# data <- readNWISmeas(siteNumbers)
# Meas05316840 <- readNWISmeas("05316840")
# Meas05316840.ex <- readNWISmeas("05316840",expanded=TRUE)
# Meas07227500.ex <- readNWISmeas("07227500",expanded=TRUE)
# Meas07227500.exRaw <- readNWISmeas("07227500",expanded=TRUE, convertType = FALSE)
# ## End(Not run)