Waterfalls and Rapids in the Conterminous United States Linked to the National Hydrography Datasets V2.0

This GeoJSON dataset contains information about 10780 waterfall and 1080 rapid locations (referred to as falls throughout the metadata) and characteristics (e.g. type and height) for the conterminous United States. This dataset centralizes known information about falls while providing basic quality control (i.e. resolving duplicate records and spatial accuracy checks) and linkages to stream networks intended to facilitate stream network analyses. Locations of falls were sourced from the World Waterfall Database (WWD, www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com), the US Forest Service Center for Aquatic Technology Transfer (acquired from Southeast Aquatic Barrier Inventory), and Geographic Names Information System (GNIS, https://geonames.usgs.gov). The coordinates and spatial attributes from source data were used to verify locations using The HydroLink Tool (https://maps.usgs.gov/hydrolink). The HydroLink Tool was also used to address locations (similar to the concept of street addresses) to both the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Medium Resolution Version 2.1 (1:100,000 scale)(NHDPlusV2.1) and National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (1:24,000 scale)(NHD HR) geospatial stream networks. The development of this dataset did not impose strict fall definitions but instead compiled qualified falls as defined by sources while capturing characteristics when available to help users identify falls of interest for any given use case. More specifically there is a gradation of waterfalls represented in the dataset where general fall types are defined by source datasets but are not standardized by USGS staff.

本GeoJSON数据集收录了美国本土范围内10780处瀑布与1080处急流的点位（元数据中统称为“falls”）及其属性特征（如类型、高度）。
本数据集整合了已公开的瀑布相关信息，同时开展了基础质量管控工作（即重复记录去重与空间精度核查），并与河网建立关联，以支持后续河网分析。
瀑布点位数据来源于世界瀑布数据库（World Waterfall Database, WWD，www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com）、美国林务局水生技术转移中心（数据源自《东南部水生障碍清单》）以及地理名称信息系统（Geographic Names Information System, GNIS，https://geonames.usgs.gov）。
研究人员借助水文连接工具（HydroLink Tool，https://maps.usgs.gov/hydrolink），基于源数据中的坐标与空间属性对点位进行了核验。
此外，水文连接工具还被用于将瀑布点位匹配至两类地理空间河网——国家水文数据集增强版中分辨率2.1版（1:10万比例尺，NHDPlusV2.1）与国家水文数据集高分辨率（1:2.4万比例尺，NHD HR），该过程类比街道地址匹配的逻辑。
本数据集的构建未设定严格的瀑布定义标准，而是直接收录源数据中定义的合格瀑布，并尽可能采集其属性特征，以帮助用户根据自身应用场景筛选所需的瀑布数据。
具体而言，本数据集收录的瀑布存在类型分级，通用瀑布类型由源数据定义，并未经过美国地质调查局（USGS）工作人员的标准化处理。