EA Catchments

EA Catchments

Environment Agency water body and catchment discovery tools for England. Uses the EA Hydrology API to find rivers, monitoring stations, and catchment areas.

Data Model

• Water Body — A river, stream, or groundwater body monitored by the EA. Identified by monitoring stations along its course.
• Station — A monitoring point on a water body with lat/long, catchment area (km²), and one or more measures.
• Measure — A time series at a station (e.g. daily mean flow in m³/s). Types: waterFlow, waterLevel, groundwaterLevel, rainfall.
• Catchment Area — The upstream drainage area (km²) at a station. Larger values indicate stations further downstream.

Key Parameters

• riverName — Exact river name filter (e.g. 'River Thames', 'River Severn')
• lat, long, dist — Geographic proximity search (WGS84 coordinates, distance in km)
• observedProperty — Filter by measurement type: waterFlow, waterLevel, groundwaterLevel, rainfall
• _limit / _offset — Pagination

Gotchas

• River names are exact match (case-sensitive). Use search parameter for fuzzy matching.
• Some stations monitor multiple rivers (junction points) — riverName may be a list.
• catchmentArea is the upstream drainage area in km² at that station, not a named region.
• Geographic search uses dist in km from the lat/long point.
• Stations near tidal limits may show tidal influence in their readings.