readNWISrating: Rating table for an active USGS streamgage retrieval

Description Usage Arguments Value Note See Also Examples


Reads current rating table for an active USGS streamgage from NWISweb. Data is retrieved from


readNWISrating(siteNumber, type = "base", convertType = TRUE)



character USGS site number. This is usually an 8 digit number


character can be "base", "corr", or "exsa"


logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to dates, datetimes, numerics based on a standard algorithm. If false, everything is returned as a character


A data frame. If type is "base," then the columns are INDEP, typically the gage height, in feet; DEP, typically the streamflow, in cubic feet per second; and STOR, where "*" indicates that the pair are a fixed point of the rating curve. If type is "exsa," then an additional column, SHIFT, is included that indicates the current shift in the rating for that value of INDEP. If type is "corr," then the columns are INDEP, typically the gage height, in feet; CORR, the correction for that value; and CORRINDEP, the corrected value for CORR.
If type is "base," then the data frame has an attribute called "RATING" that describes the rating curve is included.

There are also several useful attributes attached to the data frame:

Name Type Description
url character The url used to generate the data
queryTime POSIXct The time the data was returned
comment character Header comments from the RDB file
siteInfo data.frame A data frame containing information on the requested sites
RATING character Rating information


Not all active USGS streamgages have traditional rating curves that relate flow to stage.

See Also

constructNWISURL, importRDB1


site_id <- '01594440'

data <- readNWISrating(site_id, "base")
attr(data, "RATING")

dataRetrieval documentation built on Sept. 14, 2021, 5:16 p.m.