dataretrieval is a Python alternative to USGS-R's dataRetrieval package for obtaining USGS or EPA water quality data, streamflow data, and metadata directly from web services. Note that dataretrieval is an alternative to the R package, not a port, in that it reproduces the functionality of the R package but its organization and functionality often differ. The Python version also expands upon its predecessor by including capability to pull data from a variety of web portals besides NWIS and STORET.

If there's a hydrologic or environmental data portal that you'd like dataretrievel to work with, raise it as an issue.

Here's an example of how to use dataretrievel to retrieve data from the National Water Information System (NWIS).

# first import the functions for downloading data from NWIS
import dataretrieval.nwis as nwis

# specify the USGS site code for which we want data.
site = '03339000'


# get instantaneous values (iv)
df = nwis.get_record(sites=site, service='iv', start='2017-12-31', end='2018-01-01')

# get water quality samples (qwdata)
df2 = nwis.get_record(sites=site, service='qwdata', start='2017-12-31', end='2018-01-01')

# get basic info about the site
df3 = nwis.get_record(sites=site, service='site')

Services available from NWIS include:

• instantaneous values (iv)
• daily values (dv)
• statistics (stat)
• site info (site)
• discharge peaks (peaks)
• discharge measurements (measurements)

• water quality samples (qwdata)

To access the full functionality available from NWIS web services, nwis.get record appends any additional kwargs into the REST request. For example

nwis.get_record(sites='03339000', service='dv', start='2017-12-31', parameterCd='00060')

will download daily data with the parameter code 00060 (discharge).

More services and documentation to come!

dataretrieval can be installed using pip:

$ python3 -m pip install -U dataretrieval

If you want to run the latest version of the code, you can install from git:

$ python3 -m pip install -U git+git://github.com/USGS-python/dataretrieval.git

Please report any bugs and enhancement ideas using the dataretrieval issue tracker:

https://github.com/USGS-python/dataretrieval/issues

Feel free to also ask questions on the tracker.

Any help in testing, development, documentation and other tasks is highly appreciated and useful to the project.

For more details, see the file CONTRIBUTING.md.