Global river hydrography and network routing: baseline data and new approaches to study the world’s large river systems

摘要

Despite significant recent advancements, global hydrological models and their input databases still show limited capabilities insupporting many spatially detailed research questions and integrated assessments, such as required in freshwater ecology orapplied water resources management. In order to address these challenges, the scientific community needs to create improvedlarge-scale datasets and more flexible data structures that enable the integration of information across and within spatial scales;develop new and advanced models that support the assessment of longitudinal and lateral hydrological connectivity; and providean accessible modeling environment for researchers, decision makers, and practitioners. As a contribution, we here present a newmodeling framework that integrates hydrographic baseline data at a global scale (enhanced HydroSHEDS layers and coupleddatasets) with new modeling tools, specifically a river network routing model (HydroROUT) that is currently under development.The resulting ‘hydro-spatial fabric’ is designed to provide an avenue for advanced hydro-ecological applications at large scales ina consistent and highly versatile way. Preliminary results from case studies to assess human impacts on water quality and theeffects of dams on river fragmentation and downstream flow regulation illustrate the potential of this combined data-andmodelingframework to conduct novel research in the fields of aquatic ecology, biogeochemistry, geo-statistical modeling, orpollution and health risk assessments. The global scale outcomes are at a previously unachieved spatial resolution of 500 m andcan thus support local planning and decision making in many of the world’s large river basins. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.