USGS ScienceBase Catalog Scraper

Search and extract scientific datasets, projects, contacts, and publications from the U.S. Geological Survey's ScienceBase catalog — the official open-data repository of the USGS. Ideal for research discovery, geospatial data sourcing, scientific lead generation, and academic literature aggregation.

ScienceBase hosts hundreds of thousands of USGS-curated items spanning earthquake records, streamflow data, land-cover maps, mineral resources, biological surveys, and federal research projects. This Actor wraps the official ScienceBase Items API and pushes enriched records straight into your Apify dataset.

What you get

Field	Description
id	ScienceBase catalog item ID
title	Item title
summary	Long-form description
browseCategory	Item category (Data, Project, Publication, Map Service…)
dateCreated / lastUpdated	Lifecycle dates
tags	Subject and place keyword tags
contacts	Authors, principal investigators, point-of-contact info
webLinks	Related URLs, references, services
distributionLinks	Downloadable file URIs
permanentLink	Stable USGS link to the record

How to scrape USGS ScienceBase

1. Enter a Search Query like earthquake, streamflow California, wildfire risk, or mineral resources Alaska.
2. (Optional) Restrict the search to a parent catalog tree by setting Parent Catalog Item ID.
3. (Optional) Filter by Browse Category — Data, Project, Publication, Map Service.
4. Pick a Max Results value (default 200, up to 10,000).
5. Click Start.

Use cases

• Geospatial data sourcing — Find authoritative USGS layers and download URLs for GIS workflows.
• Scientific lead generation — Extract USGS principal-investigator contacts and project lists.
• RAG / LLM pipelines — Feed structured science metadata into knowledge bases.
• Compliance & environmental due diligence — Find official datasets on hazards, water, land cover.

Pricing

Priced at $0.003 per result, on top of Apify compute. Most queries return 50–1,000 records.

Input example

{ "query": "earthquake", "browseCategory": "", "maxResults": 200 }

Output example

{
  "id": "58ecf3efe4b0b4d95d33535f",
  "title": "Earthquake Hazards Program",
  "browseCategory": "Project",
  "permanentLink": "https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/58ecf3efe4b0b4d95d33535f",
  "contactsCount": 3,
  "tagsCount": 8
}

Related Actors

• USGS Earthquake Data Scraper — real-time seismic event feed.
• USGS Water Services Scraper — streamflow, water quality, monitoring stations.
• NOAA NCEI Climate Scraper — climate normals and observations.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. ScienceBase exposes a public, key-free JSON API.

Can I paginate beyond 100 items? Yes — the Actor paginates automatically up to your maxResults.

Legal

Data accessed from publicly available USGS endpoints under U.S. federal open-data policy. The Actor performs no authentication bypass. Respect ScienceBase rate limits.

Support: bciccarelli6@gmail.com