Alaska Aquatic Resources

Alaska Watershed and Stream Hydrography Enhanced Dataset (AWSHED) Project

The Alaska Geographic Data Committee (AGDC) Hydrography Subcommittee was formed in 1997 to explore possibilities to enhance a new data set for hydrography. The committee found that most information collected and stored about the riverine ecosystems in Alaska relate geographically to the entire river and/or to user defined reaches and sites on rivers. It found that existing formats, while suitable for cartography, provided no mechanism to link tabular information about rivers to a river, or to user defined reaches or sites on rivers in a true geographic information system (GIS).

There has been a clearly expressed need in Alaska for the delineation and standardization of watersheds at a finer scale than the 4th level sub-basin currently existing in the Hydrologic Unit system established and maintained by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the USGS. The Hydrography Subcommittee AWSHED project has undertaken the task of developing routed hydrography and standardized waterbody identifiers. It has also undertaken the task of delineating watersheds at the 5th level and subwatersheds at the 6th level.

• Project Document (Also available as MS Word doc 2.29 MB)
• Sample Data
• Alaska NHD Edits
• USGS NHD Status
• Alaska Watershed Status

Funding Provided By:

U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://agdc.usgs.gov/hydro/index.html
Page Contact Information: ascweb@usgs.gov
Page Last Modified: Fri May 30 07:59:49 2008