RiversFlow
MERIT-Basins
Vector river network and catchments from MERIT Hydro. 2.94 million river reaches with unit catchments.
MERIT Hydro vectorised into river reaches and matching unit catchments, organised in 61 Pfafstetter level 2 basins. The network behind the GRADES flow reconstruction and many large-scale routing models; a translation table links it to SWORD (MERIT-SWORD).
- Source
- Princeton University (Reach Hydro)
- Resolution
- Lines (catchments above 25 km²)
- Data type
- Lines and polygons
- Time span
- Static (v1.0)
- Temporal
- Static
- Access type
- Direct download (external)
- Formats
- Shapefile (per Pfafstetter level 2 basin)
- Coverage
- Global land (60°S – 90°N) (-180, -60, 180, 90)
- Licence
- See provider terms
- Provider page
- www.reachhydro.org/home/params/merit-basins
Cite as. Lin, P., et al. (2019). Global reconstruction of naturalized river flows at 2.94 million reaches. Water Resources Research, 55, 6499–6516. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025287
Access
linkMERIT-Basins download page
linkMERIT-SWORD translation tables (Zenodo)
curl "https://hydrological.org/api/v1/datasets/merit-basins/links?bbox=-75,-20,-50,5" \
-H "Accept: application/json"
import requests
r = requests.get("https://hydrological.org/api/v1/datasets/merit-basins/links",
params={"bbox": "-75,-20,-50,5"})
for group in r.json()["groups"]:
for link in group["links"]:
print(link["url"])
const res = await fetch("https://hydrological.org/api/v1/datasets/merit-basins/links?bbox=-75,-20,-50,5");
const { groups } = await res.json();
for (const g of groups) g.links.forEach(l => console.log(l.url));
Also available as JSON: links · manifest · dataset record