MetadataDisplay

Abstract:

Boundaries of 9,895 watersheds in Pennsylvania indicated in the Pennsylvania gazeteer of streams. These boundaries enclose catchment areas for named streams officially recognized by the Board on Geographic Names and other unofficially named streams that flow through named hollows.  ERRI extracted, reprojected and edgematched datasets for major watersheds produced by the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey into this smallsheds coverage of the state of Pennsylvania.

Purpose:

educational

Currentness_Reference:

publication date of Water Resources Division.

Use_Constraints:

none

Address:

Land and Water Building

Attribute_Accuracy_Report:

Conforms to National Mapping Program Geospatial Data Standards.  Attribute accuracy has been checked by visual comparison against source materials and peer review at USGS and ERRI.

Logical_Consistency_Report:

Verified visually.  Conforms to National Mapping Program Geospatial Data Standards.

Completeness_Report:

Verified against source materials.

Horizontal_Positional_Accuracy_Report:

Conforms to National Mapping Program Geospatial Data Standards.  Data compiled from sources conforming to National Map Accuracy Standards.  Checked visually against source materials.

Process_Description:

In 1991, USGS Water Resources Division delineated drainage basin boundaries onto 7.5 topos for streams and hollows recognized by the Board on Geographic Names as depicted in the Gazeteer of streams.  These were digitized to produce the Digital drainage basin boundaries

Process_Description:

Digital drainage basin boundaries were cut by major basin for Pennsylvania. These individual coverages were combined, edgematched and reprojected to Albers.

Entity_and_Attribute_Overview:

Pennsylvania watersheds info table includes,
WRDS# - stream code number of the Water Resources Data System database for PaDEP.
		  The code is a 5 digit integer between 00000 and 99999.  For example, 
		  the WRDS# 00833 is the Schuylkill River.  This code is used by PaDEP 
		  bureau databases to reference named streams for any activity related 
		  to streams, e.g. water-quality sampling, water-use surface-water withdrawals.
		  Codes can be found in the Pennsylvania Gazetteer of Streams.
Heirlevel - DEP identification of location stream in watershed waterway. 
		  1-11 are possible values, the lower the value the larger the drainage area
		  for the stream.
Heircode - DEP coding of relative location of the stream in the overall stream network
		  of the watershed.  The 15 digit number indicates the primary watershed and all
		  drainage basins that the stream flows through.  Both heirlevel and heircode are
		  subject to changes as edits are made to the DEP stream files.
HUC - USGS hydrologic unit code number and is defined as a numeric value with an input
        and output of eight.  This attribute has been approved for use by all Federal 
        agencies as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).  The 8-digit HUC
        number has four specific codes within it: region, subregion, accounting unit, 
        and cataloging unit.  For example, the HUC number 02040106 is translated as:
               02 = Mid Atlantic region, 
               04 = Delaware River Basin subregion, 
               03 = Upper Delaware accounting unit, and 
               04 = Lehigh River cataloging unit. 
               By name, this example HUC is all drainage basins in the Lehigh River
               drainage basin.  Source of HUC codes is U.S.G.S. water supply-paper 2294

Entity_and_Attribute_Detail_Citation:

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources & U.S. Geological Survey. 1989. Pennsylvania gazetteer of streams, Pa. D.E.R. 323 p.
Seaber, Paul R. 1987. Hydrologic unit maps. U.S. Geological Survey.  Water supply-paper 2294. 63 p.
Note that Pa. DEP and ERRI are working on an update to the stream codes.

Address:

130 Land & Water Building

Distribution_Liability:

See "Use_Constraints" above

Address:

115 Land and Water building

Pennsylvania - small watersheds