Caravan-DE: Caravan extension Germany - German dataset for large-sample hydrology

Caravan is an open community dataset of meteorological forcing data, catchment attributes, and discharge data for catchments around the world: https://zenodo.org/record/6578598.
We have employed the published code to derive meteorological forcing data and catchment attributes from global data sources to extend Caravan with data for 1887 catchments in Germany. The time series data are in daily resolution and span up to 70 years, from January 1951 to December 2020.

Most of the catchments in Caravan-DE are also part of the CAMELS-DE dataset (10.5281/zenodo.13837553, 1582 catchments). As CAMELS-DE relies on meteorological forcing data that is only available within the borders of Germany, catchments going beyond the German national borders had to be discarded. Caravan uses global data products for the meteorological forcing data and catchment attributes, which is why Caravan-DE includes these catchments that are partly located outside of Germany. As catchments in Caravan-DE and CAMELS-DE are identified by the same ID, the datasets can be used together.
Please refer to the CAMELS-DE paper (https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-318) for information about discharge data and the catchment geometries used for both Caravan-DE and CAMELS-DE.

For the processing of the data the following guide was followed step by step: https://github.com/kratzert/Caravan/wiki/Extending-Caravan-with-new-basins

Disclaimer for discharge and water level data provided by the German federal state agencies:

english:
The state agencies do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the discharge or water level data provided. In addition, all hydrological data may be subject to future revisions, including adjustments to the rating curves or corrections of errors. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain the most recent discharge time series directly from the federal state authorities for projects that require water law permits. Additionally, the regulations of the respective federal state apply and specific enquiries should be made as needed. It is also important to note that the state agencies explicitly disclaim any warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the data and therefore any liability claims against any of the federal states are also excluded.

german:
Die Ländesämter gewährleisten nicht die Genauigkeit oder Vollständigkeit der bereitgestellten Abfluss oder Wasserstandsdaten. Zudem können alle hydrologischen Daten zukünftigen Überarbeitungen unterliegen, einschließlich Anpassungen der Wasserstands-Abflussbeziehung oder der Korrektur von Fehlern. Daher ist es notwendig, die aktuellsten Abflusszeitreihen direkt bei den Landesbehörden zu beziehen, falls Wasserrechtsgenehmigungen erforderlich sind. Zusätzlich gelten die Vorschriften des jeweiligen Bundeslandes, und spezifische Anfragen sollten bei Bedarf gestellt werden. Es ist ebenfalls wichtig zu beachten, dass die staatlichen Behörden ausdrücklich jegliche Gewährleistung hinsichtlich der Genauigkeit oder Vollständigkeit der Daten ausschließen und somit auch jegliche Haftungsansprüche gegenüber einem der Bundesländer ausgeschlossen sind.

Changelog

• v1.0.1
  • Small changes to be consistent with other Caravan extensions (see https://github.com/kratzert/Caravan/issues/35):
    • camelsde_basin_shapes.shp: removed column gauge_name
    • attributes_other_camelsde.csv: added river name to gauge_name column
• v1.1.0
  • Added FAO Penman-Monteith PET (potential_evaporation_sum_FAO_PENMAN_MONTEITH) and renamed the ERA5-LAND potential_evaporation band to potential_evaporation_sum_ERA5_LAND. Also added all PET-related climate indices derived with the Penman-Monteith PET band (suffix "_FAO_PM") and renamed the old PET-related indices accordingly (suffix "_ERA5_LAND").
    This was conducted to be consistent with Caravan version 1.5.
• v1.1.1
  • By mistake, the new variables for v1.1.0 were missing in the climatic indices, these have now been added.