MeanDRS River Width Sampling: Data products corresponding to "Intrinsic spatial scales of river stores and fluxes and their relative contributions to the global water cycle"

Corresponding peer-reviewed publication

This dataset corresponds to all input and output files that were used in the study reported in:

• Wade, J., David, C.H., Collins, E.L., Denbina, M., Cerbelaud, A., Tom, M., Reager, J.T., Frasson, R.P.M., Famiglietti, J.S., Lee, T., Gierach, M.M. (In Review), Intrinsic spatial scales of river stores and fluxes and their relative contributions to the global water cycle.

When making use of any of the files in this dataset, please cite both the aforementioned article and the dataset herein.

Summary

The Earth’s rivers vary in size across several orders of magnitude. Yet, the relative significance of small upstream reaches compared to large downstream rivers in the global water cycle remains unclear, challenging the determination of adequate spatial resolution for observations. Using monthly simulations of river stores and fluxes from the MeanDRS river routing dataset, we sample global rivers by a range of estimated river width thresholds to investigate the intrinsic spatial scales of the global river water cycle. We frame these scale-dependent river dynamics in terms of observational capabilities, assessing how the size of rivers that can be resolved influences our ability to capture key global hydrologic stores and fluxes.

We aim to answer two questions:

1.     What is the intrinsic spatial resolution of global river dynamics?

2.     How can the spatial scale of river processes be used to inform efficient monitoring and modeling strategies of global river stores and fluxes?

Data sources

The following sources were used to produce files in this dataset:

• Mean Discharge Runoff and Storage (MeanDRS) dataset (version v0.4) available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. https://zenodo.org/records/10013744. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10013744; 10.1038/s41561-024-01421-5
• MERIT-Basins (version 1.0) derived from MERIT-Hydro (version 0.7) available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. https://www.reachhydro.org/home/params/merit-basins

Software

The software that was used to produce files in this dataset are available at https://github.com/jswade/meandrs-width-sampling.

Data Products

The following files represent the primary outputs of the analysis. Each file class generally has 61 files, corresponding to the 61 global hydrologic regions (region ii).

Riv_coast.zip contains shapefiles of corrected and uncorrected MeanDRS river reaches that intersect with the global coast and are inferred to drain to the ocean.

·       riv_coast.zip

    o      cor: riv_coast_pfaf_ii_COR.shp

    o      uncor: riv_coast_pfaf_ii_UNCOR.shp

Qout_rivwidth.zip contains csv files of the aggregate river discharge to the ocean (km³/yr) of under each tested river width sampling scenario for each of the 61 global hydrologic regions.

·       Qout_rivwidth.zip: Qout_pfaf_ii_rivwidth.csv

V_rivwidth_low.zip contains csv files of the aggregate river storage (km³) for the low residence time scenario under each tested river width sampling scenario for each of the 61 global hydrologic regions.

·       V_rivwidth_low.zip: V_pfaf_ii_rivwidth_low.csv

V_rivwidth_nrm.zip contains csv files of the aggregate river storage (km³) for the normal (medium) residence time scenario under each tested river width sampling scenario for each of the 61 global hydrologic regions.

·       V_rivwidth_nrm.zip: V_pfaf_ii_rivwidth_nrm.csv

V_rivwidth_hig.zip contains csv files of the aggregate river storage (km³) for the high residence time scenario under each tested river width sampling scenario for each of the 61 global hydrologic regions.

·       V_rivwidth_hig.zip: V_pfaf_ii_rivwidth_hig.csv

Largest_rivs.zip contains files related to our analysis of the relative contributions of discharge to the ocean from the 10 largest global river basins.

·       largest_rivs.zip

    o      cat: cat_dis_top10_nxx.shp – dissolved catchments of reaches draining from the 10 largest basins

    o      csv: Q_df_top10.csv – total discharge contributed by each basin

    o      riv: riv_top10_nxx.shp – river reaches that drain the 10 largest basins

Smallest_rivs.zip contains files related to our analysis of the relative contributions of discharge to the ocean from global rivers narrower than 100 m.

·       smallest_rivs.zip

    o      cat: cat_pfaf_pfaf_ii_small_100m.shp – dissolved catchments of narrow reaches draining to the ocean for each region ii

    o      csv: Q_df_top10.csv – total discharge to the ocean from each narrow river reach

    o      riv: riv_pfaf_ii_small_100m.shp – river reaches narrower than 100 m that drain to the ocean for each region ii

Global_summary.zip contains files related to the global aggregation of our region-specific river width sampling estimates for discharge to the ocean and river storage.

·       global_summary.zip

    o      Qout_rivwidth: global summary files for discharge to the ocean (km³/yr) under river width sampling

    o      V_rivwidth_low: global summary files for total river storage (km³) for the low residence time scenario under river width sampling

    o      V_rivwidth_nrm: global summary files for total river storage (km³) for the normal (medium) residence time scenario under river width sampling

    o      V_rivwidth_hig: global summary files for total river storage (km³) for the hig residence time scenario under river width sampling

    o      cat_small_gl: cat_dis_global_small_100m.shp – global dissolved catchments contributing to all rivers narrower than 100 m that drain to the ocean

Rivwidth_sens.zip contains files related to our supplemental analysis of the sensitivity of our width estimation approach to choice of input discharge dataset. Here, we compute estimated river widths using 3 versions of MeanDRS discharge outputs (VIC, CLSM, NOAH) and compare the results of river width sampling from those runs to that of the primary analysis. The file formats and explanations follow those presented above, with added information for the land surface model used to generate those discharge simulations.

·       Rivwidth_sens.zip

    o      riv_coast

    o      Qout_rivwidth_VIC

    o      Qout_rivwidth_CLSM

    o      Qout_rivwidth_NOAH

    o      V_rivwidth_low_VIC

    o      V_rivwidth_nrm_VIC

    o      V_rivwidth_hig_VIC

    o      V_rivwidth_low_CLSM

    o      V_rivwidth_nrm_CLSM

    o      V_rivwidth_hig_CLSM

    o      V_rivwidth_low_NOAH

    o      V_rivwidth_nrm_NOAH

    o      V_rivwidth_hig_NOAH

    o      global_summary_VIC

    o      global_summary_CLSM

    o      global_summary_NOAH

Cor_sens.zip contains files related to our supplemental analysis of the sensitivity use of corrected ensemble MeanDRS discharge and volume simulations as opposed to uncorrected ensemble simulations. Here, we repeat our primary analysis using only uncorrected simulations throughout, rather than performing river width sampling using corrected simulations. The file formats and explanations follow those presented above, with the files using uncorrected ensemble (ENS) discharge and storage values in contrast to the primary analysis.

·       Rivwidth_sens.zip

    o      Qout_rivwidth_ENS

    o      V_rivwidth_low_ENS

    o      V_rivwidth_nrm_ENS

    o      V_rivwidth_hig_ENS

    o      global_summary_ENS

Known bugs in this dataset or the associated manuscript

No bugs have been identified at this time.

References

Collins, E. L., David, C. H., Riggs, R., Allen, G. H., Pavelsky, T. M., Lin, P., Pan, M., Yamazaki, D., Meentemeyer, R. K., & Sanchez, G. M. (2024). Global patterns in river water storage dependent on residence time. Nature Geoscience, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01421-5

Lin, P., Pan, M., Beck, H. E., Yang, Y., Yamazaki, D., Frasson, R., David, C. H., Durand, M., Pavelsky, T. M., Allen, G. H., Gleason, C. J., & Wood, E. F. (2019). Global Reconstruction of Naturalized River Flows at 2.94 Million Reaches. Water Resources Research, 55(8), 6499–6516. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025287

Yang, Y., Pan, M., Lin, P., Beck, H. E., Zeng, Z., Yamazaki, D., David, C. H., Lu, H., Yang, K., Hong, Y., & Wood, E. F. (2021). Global Reach-Level 3-Hourly River Flood Reanalysis (1980–2019). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 102(11), E2086–E2105. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0057.1