U.S. Geological Survey
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a scientific agency of the U.S. government that conducts research and provides data on the natural resources and hazards of the United States. The USGS is known for its work in mapping and monitoring earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides to help mitigate risks and protect communities. USGS also studies water resources including streamflow, groundwater, and water quality through a nationwide network of monitoring stations. Their public APIs provide programmatic access to real-time earthquake data, water monitoring observations, seismic design parameters, and geospatial data products.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles U.S. Geological Survey the way a machine reads it — 92 machine-readable artifacts across 11 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — U.S. Geological Survey scores 51.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile U.S. Geological Survey
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for U.S. Geological Survey. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 11
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Asset Identifier Service (AIS)
The USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS) allows USGS personnel to reserve, register, publish, and manage USGS persistent identifiers to make research more Findable, Accessible, I...
Seismic Design Web Service
Web services produced by the U.S. Geological Survey for calculating parameter values from various seismic design reference documents for engineering and construction purposes.
ScienceBase
ScienceBase is a USGS Trusted Digital Repository that provides permission-controlled and public access to scientific data products through a REST API supporting upload, document...
StreamStats Web Services
The StreamStats Web Services provide HTTP-accessible hydrological analysis services for delineating drainage areas, estimating peak flows, and computing basin characteristics fo...
USGS Water Services (Legacy)
The original USGS NWIS water services API providing streamflow, groundwater, water quality, and site information via REST protocol in XML and other media types. High availabilit...
U.S. Geological Survey Catalog API
Discover available catalogs, contributors, and supported parameter values.
U.S. Geological Survey Collections API
OGC API collections listing and metadata.
U.S. Geological Survey Earthquakes API
Query and retrieve earthquake event data from the USGS earthquake catalog.
U.S. Geological Survey Monitoring Locations API
USGS stream gages, groundwater wells, and other water monitoring stations.
U.S. Geological Survey Reference Data API
Reference code tables including agency codes, datum types, and aquifer data.
U.S. Geological Survey Time Series Data API
Continuous and daily value water data from USGS monitoring locations.
Scroll within the panel for all 11 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
U S Geological Survey Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Features 6
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Earthquake Catalog Query
Search the USGS ANSS ComCat earthquake catalog by geography, time, magnitude, depth, and event type with 20,000 event limit per query.
Real-Time Earthquake Data
Access near real-time earthquake data updated within minutes of events occurring anywhere in the world.
Water Monitoring Locations
Query USGS stream gages, groundwater wells, and other water quality monitoring stations by state, watershed, or geographic area.
Water Data Time Series
Retrieve continuous and daily water data including streamflow, stage, temperature, and water quality parameters.
OGC API Compliance
USGS Water Data APIs implement OGC API Features standard supporting CQL2 filtering, spatial queries, and standardized output formats.
GeoJSON Output
All spatial data returned in GeoJSON format compatible with mapping libraries and geospatial analysis tools.
Semantic Vocabularies 2
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Usgs Earthquake Api Context
JSON-LDUsgs Water Data Api Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 3
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
U.S. Geological Survey API Rules
SPECTRALU.S. Geological Survey API Rules
SPECTRALU.S. Geological Survey API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 18
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
CountResponse
JSON SCHEMAEarthquakeFeatureCollection
JSON SCHEMAEarthquakeFeature
JSON SCHEMAEarthquakeGeometry
JSON SCHEMAEarthquakeMetadata
JSON SCHEMAEarthquakeProperties
JSON SCHEMACollection
JSON SCHEMACollectionsList
JSON SCHEMAErrorResponse
JSON SCHEMAFeatureCollection
JSON SCHEMALandingPage
JSON SCHEMALink
JSON SCHEMAMonitoringLocationCollection
JSON SCHEMAMonitoringLocationFeature
JSON SCHEMAMonitoringLocationProperties
JSON SCHEMATimeSeriesCollection
JSON SCHEMATimeSeriesFeature
JSON SCHEMATimeSeriesProperties
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 18 ·
JSON Structure 18
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Usgs Earthquake Api Count Response Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Earthquake Api Earthquake Feature Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Earthquake Api Earthquake Geometry Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Earthquake Api Earthquake Metadata Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Earthquake Api Earthquake Properties Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Collection Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Collections List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Error Response Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Feature Collection Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Landing Page Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Link Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Time Series Collection Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Time Series Feature Structure
JSON STRUCTUREUsgs Water Data Api Time Series Properties Structure
JSON STRUCTUREScroll within the panel for all 18 ·
Examples 18
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Scroll within the panel for all 18 ·
Security Posture 3
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Use Cases 5
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Earthquake Hazard Monitoring
Emergency managers and scientists monitor real-time earthquake activity for hazard assessment and emergency response planning.
Flood Forecasting
Hydrologists use USGS streamflow data for flood prediction, water supply forecasting, and reservoir management.
Groundwater Management
Water managers track groundwater level trends for sustainable aquifer management and drought assessment.
Environmental Research
Researchers use USGS geological and water data for environmental impact assessments and climate change studies.
Engineering Design
Civil engineers use USGS water data and seismic design services for infrastructure planning and construction.
Integrations 4
Pre-built integrations with other platforms tell you where this provider already fits in a stack.
Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.
USGS GitHub Organization
Open-source tools including libcomcat, rcomcat, and other clients for accessing USGS earthquake and water data.
USGS Water Data for the Nation
The flagship USGS water data portal at waterdata.usgs.gov providing maps and tools built on the NWIS water services API.
National Water Information System (NWIS)
Legacy USGS water data system providing the underlying data for Water Data APIs with millions of site records.
FDSN Standards
USGS earthquake API implements FDSN (International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks) web service specifications.
Resources
Every other property we hold for U.S. Geological Survey — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 2
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Company 3
The organization behind the API
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