pynhd 0.10.0

Process and access NHDPlus V2 data through NLDI and WaterData web services.

Package	Description	Status
PyGeoHydro	Access NWIS, NID, HCDN 2009, NLCD, and SSEBop databases
PyGeoOGC	Send queries to any ArcGIS RESTful-, WMS-, and WFS-based services
PyGeoUtils	Convert responses from PyGeoOGC’s supported web services to datasets
PyNHD	Navigate and subset NHDPlus (MR and HR) using web services
Py3DEP	Access topographic data through National Map’s 3DEP web service
PyDaymet	Access Daymet for daily climate data both single pixel and gridded

PyNHD: Navigate and subset NHDPlus database

Features

PyNHD is part of a software stack for retrieving and processing hydrology and climatology datasets. This package provides access to WaterData, the National Map’s NHDPlus HR, and NLDI web services. These web services can be used to navigate and extract vector data from NHDPlus V2 (both medium- and hight-resolution) database such as catchments, HUC8, HUC12, GagesII, flowlines, and water bodies. Moreover, PyNHD gives access to an item on ScienceBase called Select Attributes for NHDPlus Version 2.1 Reach Catchments and Modified Network Routed Upstream Watersheds for the Conterminous United States. This item provides over 30 attributes at catchment-scale based on NHDPlus ComIDs. These attributes are available in three categories:

1. Local (local): For individual reach catchments,

2. Total (upstream_acc): For network-accumulated values using total cumulative drainage area,

3. Divergence (div_routing): For network-accumulated values using divergence-routed.

A list of these attributes for each characteristic type can be accessed using nhdplus_attrs function.

Additionally, PyNHD offers some extra utilities for processing the flowlines:

• prepare_nhdplus: For cleaning up the dataframe by, for example, removing tiny networks, adding a to_comid column, and finding a terminal flowlines if it doesn’t exist.

• topoogical_sort: For sorting the river network topologically which is useful for routing and flow accumulation.

• vector_accumulation: For computing flow accumulation in a river network. This function is generic and any routing method can be plugged in.

These utilities are developed based on an R package called nhdplusTools.

You can find some example notebooks here.

Please note that since this project is in early development stages, while the provided functionalities should be stable, changes in APIs are possible in new releases. But we appreciate it if you give this project a try and provide feedback. Contributions are most welcome.

Moreover, requests for additional functionalities can be submitted via issue tracker.

Installation

You can install PyNHD using pip after installing libgdal on your system (for example, in Ubuntu run sudo apt install libgdal-dev):

$ pip install pynhd

Alternatively, PyNHD can be installed from the conda-forge repository using Conda:

$ conda install -c conda-forge pynhd

Quick start

Let’s explore the capabilities of NLDI. We need to instantiate the class first:

from pynhd import NLDI, WaterData, NHDPlusHR
import pynhd as nhd

First, let’s get the watershed geometry of the contributing basin of a USGS station using NLDI:

nldi = NLDI()
station_id = "01031500"

basin = nldi.get_basins(station_id)

The navigate_byid class method can be used to navigate NHDPlus in both upstream and downstream of any point in the database. Let’s get ComIDs and flowlines of the tributaries and the main river channel in the upstream of the station.

flw_main = nldi.navigate_byid(
    fsource="nwissite",
    fid=f"USGS-{station_id}",
    navigation="upstreamMain",
    source="flowlines",
    distance=1000,
)

flw_trib = nldi.navigate_byid(
    fsource="nwissite",
    fid=f"USGS-{station_id}",
    navigation="upstreamTributaries",
    source="flowlines",
    distance=1000,
)

We can get other USGS stations upstream (or downstream) of the station and even set a distance limit (in km):

st_all = nldi.navigate_byid(
    fsource="nwissite",
    fid=f"USGS-{station_id}",
    navigation="upstreamTributaries",
    source="nwissite",
    distance=1000,
)

st_d20 = nldi.navigate_byid(
    fsource="nwissite",
    fid=f"USGS-{station_id}",
    navigation="upstreamTributaries",
    source="nwissite",
    distance=20,
)

Now, let’s get the HUC12 pour points:

pp = nldi.navigate_byid(
    fsource="nwissite",
    fid=f"USGS-{station_id}",
    navigation="upstreamTributaries",
    source="huc12pp",
    distance=1000,
)

Next, we retrieve the medium- and high-resolution flowlines within the bounding box of our watershed and compare them. Moreover, Since serveral web services offer access to NHDPlus database, NHDPlusHR has an argument for selecting a service and also an argument for automatically switching between services.

mr = WaterData("nhdflowline_network")
nhdp_mr = mr.bybox(basin.geometry[0].bounds)

hr = NHDPlusHR("networknhdflowline", service="hydro", auto_switch=True)
nhdp_hr = hr.bygeom(basin.geometry[0].bounds)

Moreover, WaterData can find features within a given radius (in meters) of a point:

eck4 = "+proj=eck4 +lon_0=0 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs"
coords = (-5727797.427596455, 5584066.49330473)
rad = 5e3
flw_rad = mr.bydistance(coords, rad, loc_crs=eck4)
flw_rad = flw_rad.to_crs(eck4)

Instead of getting all features withing a radius of the coordinate, we can snap to the closest flowline using NLDI:

comid_closest = nldi.comid_byloc((x, y), eck4)
flw_closest = nhdp_mr.byid("comid", comid_closest.comid.values[0])

Since NHDPlus HR is still at the pre-release stage let’s use the MR flowlines to demonstrate the vector-based accumulation. Based on a topological sorted river network pynhd.vector_accumulation computes flow accumulation in the network. It returns a dataframe which is sorted from upstream to downstream that shows the accumulated flow in each node.

PyNHD has a utility called prepare_nhdplus that identifies such relationship among other things such as fixing some common issues with NHDPlus flowlines. But first we need to get all the NHDPlus attributes for each ComID since NLDI only provides the flowlines’ geometries and ComIDs which is useful for navigating the vector river network data. For getting the NHDPlus database we use WaterData. Let’s use the nhdflowline_network layer to get required info.

wd = WaterData("nhdflowline_network")

comids = flw_trib.nhdplus_comid.to_list()
nhdp_trib = wd.byid("comid", comids)
flw = nhd.prepare_nhdplus(nhdp_trib, 0, 0, purge_non_dendritic=False)

To demonstrate the use of routing, let’s use nhdplus_attrs function to get list of available NHDPlus attributes

char = "CAT_RECHG"
area = "areasqkm"

local = nldi.getcharacteristic_byid(comids, "local", char_ids=char)
flw = flw.merge(local[char], left_on="comid", right_index=True)

def runoff_acc(qin, q, a):
    return qin + q * a

flw_r = flw[["comid", "tocomid", char, area]]
runoff = nhd.vector_accumulation(flw_r, runoff_acc, char, [char, area])

def area_acc(ain, a):
    return ain + a

flw_a = flw[["comid", "tocomid", area]]
areasqkm = nhd.vector_accumulation(flw_a, area_acc, area, [area])

runoff /= areasqkm

Since these are catchment-scale characteristic, let’s get the catchments then add the accumulated characteristic as a new column and plot the results.

wd = WaterData("catchmentsp")
catchments = wd.byid("featureid", comids)

c_local = catchments.merge(local, left_on="featureid", right_index=True)
c_acc = catchments.merge(runoff, left_on="featureid", right_index=True)

More examples can be found here.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcomed. Please read CONTRIBUTING.rst file for instructions.