Abstract

A method to align watersheds with the Watershed Boundary Dataset
Track: National Mapping
Authors: Curtis Price, Karen Hanson, Alan Rea

The U.S. Geological Survey has begun an effort to serve watershed boundaries for its continuous-record gages in alignment with the seamless, locally-reviewed Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) polygon boundaries. Because gage locations are not located exactly on WBD boundaries, a method was developed that, given a user-supplied watershed polygon and pour point, a) clips and conforms the input polygon to a WBD polygon boundary, b) merges any “upstream” WBD polygons, and c) recalculates area.