NHD Major Lakes and Reservoirs Shapefile

Major lakes and reservoirs in California selected from the NHD in a zipped shapefile format. Developed for use as a cartographic aid at smaller scales. The features for this dataset were selected from the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) based on size, not on importance to any particular agency. Resource last updated 1/30/2024.

Shapefiles include a .csv with the Ftype code descriptors. These descriptors can be joined to the shapefile via a join on the code field.

Services for this layer may be found at:

https://gis.water.ca.gov/arcgis/rest/services/InlandWaters/NHD_Major_Lakes_and_Reservoirs/FeatureServer

https://gis.water.ca.gov/arcgis/rest/services/InlandWaters/NHD_Major_Lakes_and_Reservoirs/MapServer

Data were originally developed and supplied by USGS, and last updated on February 20, 2020. Data was downloaded from USGS National Map Staged Products Directory (http://prd-tnm.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?prefix=StagedProducts/Hydrography/NHD/State/HighResolution/GDB/http://prd-tnm.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?prefix=StagedProducts/Hydrography/NHD/State/HighResolution/GDB/) on March 3rd, 2022.

In order to display only major lakes and reservoirs, the following definition query was applied to the NHDWaterbody feature class.

(FType = 390 And AreaSqKm > 5) Or (FType = 436 And AreaSqKm > 5 And Permanent_Identifier <> 'fa567cba-b37b-48b7-99d8-bd72a110fdbe' And Permanent_Identifier <> 'c5cae0f8-7d44-4149-b7ef-1b5197adc5a0' And Permanent_Identifier <> '120012522') Or GNIS_Name = 'Elderberry Forebay' Or GNIS_Name = 'Castaic Lagoon' Or Permanent_Identifier = '27088117' Or Permanent_Identifier = '27822760' Or GNIS_Name = 'Thermalito Diversion Pool' Or GNIS_Name = 'Los Banos Reservoir' Or GNIS_Name = 'Thermalito Forebay' Or GNIS_Name = 'Lake Piru' Or GNIS_Name = 'Pyramid Lake' Or GNIS_Name = 'Lake Natoma'