Global River Topology (GRIT)

The Global River Topology (GRIT) is a vector-based, global river network that not only represents the tributary components of the global drainage network but also the distributary ones, including multi-thread rivers, canals and delta distributaries. It is also the first global hydrography (excl. Antarctica and Greenland) produced at 30m raster resolution. It is created by merging Landsat-based river mask (GRWL) with elevation-generated streams to ensure a homogeneous drainage density outside of the river mask (rivers narrower than approx. 30m). Crucially, it uses a new 30m digital terrain model (FABDEM, based on TanDEM-X) that shows greater accuracy over the traditionally used SRTM derivatives. After vectorisation and pruning, directionality is assigned by a combination of elevation, flow angle, heuristic and continuity approaches (based on RivGraph). The network topology (lines and nodes, upstream/downstream IDs) is available as layers and attribute information in the GeoPackage files (readable by QGIS/ArcMap/GDAL).

A map of GRIT segments labelled with OSM river names is available here: https://michelwortmann.com/research/gritv05-segments-river-names/

Regions

Vector files are provided in 7 regions with the following codes:

• AF - Africa
• AS - Asia (excl. Siberia)
• EU - Europe
• NA - North America
• SA - South America
• SI - Siberia
• SP - South Pacific/Australia

The domain polygons (GRITv06_domain_GLOBAL.gpkg.zip) provide 60 subcontinental catchment groups that are available as vector attributes. They allow for more fine-grained subsetting of data (e.g. with ogr2ogr --where and the domain attribute).

Vector files are provided both in the original equal-area Equal Earth Greenwich projection (EPSG:8857) as well as in geographic WGS84 coordinates (EPSG:4326).

Change log

• v0.6 - 2024-05-30
  • Rivers/streams outside of the GRWL mask forced by all OSM water lines (not only those with waterway=river/canal)
  • Some manual directions in the Irrawaddy delta and fixed erronous sink in the Volga delta
• v0.5 - 2024-02-14
  • Cyclicity and discontinuities resolved through improved algorithms, bug fixes, more sophisticated cycle solving algorithms and some manually forced directions. Only insignificant cycles (non-sinks, less than 50) were removed.
  • Added segment and reach attributes
  • Computational domain fixes
  • Segments include OSM river names
  • Asia domain split into Siberia and rest of Asia
  • Vector files available in EPSG:8857 and EPSG:4326
• v0.4 - 2023-03-11
  
  • First globally complete dataset published

Network segments

Lines between inlet, outlet, confluence and bifurcation nodes. Files have lines and nodes layers.

Attribute description of lines layer

Attribute description of nodes layer

Network reaches

Segment lines split to not exceed 1km in length, i.e. these lines will be shorter than 1km and longer than 500m unless the segment is shorter. A simplified version with no vertices between nodes is also provided. Files have lines and nodes layers.

Attribute description of lines layer

Attribute description of nodes layer

Catchments

Catchment outlines for entire river basins (network components, including coastal drainage areas). Catchments for segments (aka. subbasins) and reaches are also available on request.

Attribute description

Raster

Upstream drainage area and other raster-based products are also available upon request.