Your Watershed

FIND YOUR HYDROLOGIC UNIT CODE (HUC)

The United States is divided and sub-divided into successively smaller hydrologic units which are classified into four levels: regions, sub-regions, accounting units, and cataloging units. The hydrologic units are arranged or nested within each other, from the largest geographic area (regions) to the smallest geographic area (cataloging units). Each hydrologic unit is identified by a unique hydrologic unit code (HUC) consisting of two to eight digits based on the four levels of classification in the hydrologic unit system.

The second level of classification divides the 21 regions into 221 subregions. A subregion includes the area drained by a river system, a reach of a river and its tributaries in that reach, a closed basin(s), or a group of streams forming a coastal drainage area.The first level of classification divides the Nation into 21 major geographic areas, or regions. These geographic areas contain either the drainage area of a major river, such as the Missouri region, or the combined drainage areas of a series of rivers, such as the Texas-Gulf region, which includes a number of rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico. Eighteen of the regions occupy the land area of the conterminous United States. Alaska constitues region 19, the Hawaii Islands are region 20, and Puerto Rico and other outlying Caribbean areas are region 21. [The regions are shown in figure 1.]

The third level of classification subdivides many of the subregions into accounting units. These 378 hydrologic accounting units are nested within, or can be equivalent to the subregions.

The fourth level of classification is the cataloging unit, the smallest element in the hierarchy of hydrologic units. A cataloging unit is a geographic area representing part of all of a surface drainage basin, a combination of drainage basins, or a distinct hydrologic feature. These units subdivide the subregions and accounting units into smaller areas. There are 2264 Cataloging Units in the Nation. Cataloging Units sometimes are called "watersheds".