3D Hydrography Program

The 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP) is a United States-wide hydrography dataset produced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). It is the successor to the now retired National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and uses data from the USGS 3D Elevation Program, which similarly succeeded the National Elevation Dataset in 2014. The 3DHP dataset includes natural and man-made water features such as: rivers, lakes, drains, springs, sinks, canals, culverts, and pipelines. Unlike the NHD, the 3DHP does not make a distinction between lakes and ponds, and between rivers and streams. Named features include GNIS IDs which can specify a stream versus a river however.

As a product of the US Government, the dataset is in the public domain. The 3DHP is the first nationwide remapping of water in the United States since 1992.[1] The first new data was made available as a service in October 2023. Complete coverage of the United States is expected to be done in 2032.[2]

3DHP includes Elevation-derived hydrography (EDH), which is a detailed dataset of water features generated from elevation data, such as digital elevation models (DEMs). EDH addresses the requirement for hydrographic data that align with corresponding elevation datasets, which is essential for applications like flood modeling. Integrating hydrographic and elevation data is challenging when they do not spatially align.