Livestock water use
Modeled 2022 livestock water-use withdrawals by county, summed to Idaho statewide, every other state, and the United States, from a USGS national data release.
Publisher
- Organization
- U.S. Geological Survey
- Publisher’s dataset
- Livestock water-use withdrawal estimates for 2022 by 12-digit hydrologic unit code, county, month, and year for the United States, excluding territories
- File or API used
- https://doi.org/10.5066/P1YUVSRN
- Retrieval script
scripts/fetch-usgs-livestock-water-use.py- Methodology
- https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/66e47b09d34e1cc1f894ed22
Coverage
- Geography
- Idaho (statewide and every county), every other state, United States
- Time coverage
- 2022
- Update frequency
- Irregular
- Published
- May 22, 2026
- Retrieved
- September 9, 2026
- License of the records
- Public domain. Marked CC0 1.0 Universal by the U.S. Geological Survey.
- Rows
- 98 observations, 2022
Measures
| Measure | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Livestock water withdrawals | Modeled water withdrawn for livestock (including poultry) per year, converted from USGS's published million-gallons-per-day annual mean. | acre feet |
| Livestock water withdrawals by source | Modeled water withdrawn for livestock per year, broken out by groundwater and surface-water source, converted from USGS's published million-gallons-per-day annual mean. | acre feet |
Caveats
- This dataset covers livestock, including poultry, water use only; other categories such as irrigation, public supply, and industrial are not included.
- These are modeled estimates: state-level per-head water-use coefficients multiplied by county animal inventories, not reported or metered withdrawals.
- This is not the same series as the 1985-2015 Water Use Circular figures; it uses a different, more recent county base and is not comparable.
- USGS publishes withdrawals in Mgal/d; values here are converted to acre-feet per year (1 Mgal/d = 1,120.14 acre-feet per year).
Pages built on this dataset
How to cite
Understand Idaho, “Livestock water-use withdrawal estimates for 2022 by 12-digit hydrologic unit code, county, month, and year for the United States, excluding territories”, compiled from U.S. Geological Survey, Livestock water-use withdrawal estimates for 2022 by 12-digit hydrologic unit code, county, month, and year for the United States, excluding territories. Retrieved September 9, 2026. https://understandidaho.com/data/usgs-livestock-water-use/.
Cite U.S. Geological Survey directly for the figures themselves.
This page was last updated .