NHD Major Lakes and Reservoirs Geodatabase

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 primarily on size. Resource last updated 1/30/2024.

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'