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Water: Watersheds

How to Find a Watershed Address

Locate Your Watershed

locate1 You can find out what your watershed's address by going to Locate Your Watershed. Here you can type in just about anything and you will find out the HUC of the watershed. You can search by city, state, zip code, school name, airport, tribal nation, county,........ Good luck!

Is there a way to "address" a watershed?

We refer to watersheds by their proper name as well as by a grouping of numbers. This set of numbers is called the watershed's Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC), also known as the watershed address. The HUC can range from 2 to 16 digits long - more numbers means its the address of a smaller watershed.

Watersheds are delineated by USGS using a nationwide system based on surface hydrologic features. This system divides the country into 21 regions, 222 subregions, 352 accounting units, and 2,262 cataloguing units. A hierarchical hydrologic unit code (HUC) consisting of 2 digits for each level in the hydrologic unit system is used to identify any hydrologic area. The 6 digit accounting units and the 8 digit cataloguing units are generally referred to as basin and sub-basin. There are many states that have defined down to 16-digit HUCs.

What geographic-specific webpages are available nationwide ?
Your watershed address can take you directly to a webpage with a collection of watershed- specific information. In addition to these watershed webpages, other webpages of information are available for the following places:

What webpages are available for geographic-initiatives or programs for protecting and restoring watersheds?

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