This dataset represents the estimated surface water runoff within individual local and accumulated upstream catchments for NHDPlusV2 Waterbodies.

        Catchment boundaries in LakeCat are defined in one of two ways, on-network or off-network. The on-network catchment boundaries follow the catchments provided in the NHDPlusV2 and the metrics for these lakes mirror metrics from StreamCat, but will substitute the COMID of the NHDWaterbody for that of the NHDFlowline. The off-network catchment framework uses the NHDPlusV2 flow direction rasters to define non-overlapping lake-catchment boundaries and then links them through an off-network flow table.

        The landscape layer (raster) was developed with a water-balance model developed by Dave Wolock of the USGS and is detailed further in the paper "Independent effects of temperature and precipitation on modeled runoff in the conterminous United States". McCabe and Wolock[2011] Runoff is defined as the flow per unit area delivered to streams and rivers in units of millimeters per month.

        The runoff estimates were summarized to produce local catchment-level and watershed-level metrics as a continuous data type.