The linear hydrography shapefile contains all linear hydrography features with “H” (Hydrography) type MTFCC in the MAF/TIGER database by county. The shapefiles are provided at a county geographic extent and in linear elemental feature geometry. The content of the linear hydrography shapefile includes streams/rivers, braided streams, canals, ditches, artificial paths and aqueducts. A linear hydrography feature may include edges with both perennial and intermittent persistence.
The artificial path features may correspond to those in the USGS National Hydrographic Dataset (NHD). However, in many cases the features do not match NHD equivalent feature and will not carry the NHD metadata codes.
Single-line drainage water features include artificial path features that run through double-line drainage features such as rivers and streams, and serve as a linear representation of these features. Shorelines for area hydrography can be found in the All Lines shapefiles with MTFCC set to either “P0002” (shoreline of perennial water feature) or “P0003” (shoreline of intermittent water feature).
| Hydrography (Linear) Shapefile Record Layout | |||
| tl_year_[state-county FIPS]_linearwater.shp | |||
| Field | Length | Type | Description |
| ANSICODE | 8 | String | Official code for use by federal agencies for data transfer and dissemination, if applicable |
| LINEARID | 22 | String | Linear hydrography identifier |
| FULLNAME | 100 | String | Concatenation of expanded text for prefix qualifier, prefix direction, prefix type, base name, suffix type, suffix direction, and suffix qualifier (as available) with a space between each expanded text field |
| ARTPATH | 1 | String | Artificial path flag |
| MTFCC | 5 | String | MAF/TIGER feature class code |