The result is that more information gets to more users faster and at less cost. The new National Water Conditions report is very popular. Readers have accessed it from over 5000 sites from all over the world. Aside from the immediate publication value, the knowledge gained through this effort has had a great impact on other Internet applications. Daily Flow Values Daily flow values for all USGS stations through Water Year 1993 are available on the Web.
Users can select a station by name or number from a scrolling list organized by county.
The flow values and dates are returned in a simple tab-delimited format along with header information about the station. The file may be viewed on the screen or saved on the users local computer. Alternatively, the user can see a graph of the streamflow values figure 3. This application was made possible by the rapidly declining cost of disk storage and the ease with which users can find and retrieve files through the Web. It is proving more convenient to serve popular data sets on the Web than to make custom retrievals from main data bases.