Data sources & licenses

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (324 lakes)

Pool elevations, storage and pool limits come from the Corps' water management system (CWMS). Current readings come from the public data service behind the Corps' Access to Water site; seasonal pool limits and the catalogue of gauge series come from the CWMS Data API. No key is needed.

Terms: works of the U.S. federal government are not subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. § 105). The Corps describes real-time data as provisional and subject to revision.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (14 lakes)

Daily reservoir elevations for Lake Mead, Lake Powell and other western reservoirs come from Reclamation's Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (RISE) API. No key is needed.

Terms: U.S. government work, public domain. Reclamation states that its data are provisional and subject to revision unless otherwise noted.

U.S. Geological Survey (2 lakes)

Daily lake elevations for natural lakes come from the USGS Water Data APIs (OGC API, daily values). We use the new API, not the legacy WaterServices API that the USGS is retiring.

Terms: USGS-authored data are U.S. public domain. Recent values are provisional until the USGS approves them. An optional free api.data.gov key raises rate limits; it is kept on the server only.

Photographs

Lake photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, chosen through the image Wikidata lists for the lake, and are used under the license named in each page's footer credit (Creative Commons or public domain). Pages without a lake photograph use a photograph of open water by Griffin Keller, under the Unsplash License.

Type

Archivo, by Omnibus-Type, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, served from this site.

Not an official source

Lakefullness is not affiliated with these agencies. For navigation, flood safety or legal purposes, use the agency's own site, linked from every lake page.