Toward a Subnational River-Border Dataset
Abstract
There exists no global, geospatial dataset of subnational political boundaries formed by rivers, despite the fact that subnational political units often have a major stake in water resource management. We debut Global Subnational River Borders (GSRB), the first dataset of this kind detailing subnational, as well as national, river-borders. GSRB uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to combine pre-existing datasets, including remotely-sensed hydrologic datasets, in order to locate subnational river borders. Despite being a conservative estimate, GSRB reveals a large proportion of river borders at subnational levels. Additionally, this project shows that the majority of the world's population lives near rivers, which provides additional planning challenges as the Earth moves towards an increasingly water scarce future. GSRB highlights the influence of river-borders at subnational scales, pointing out additional stakeholders at play in transboundary basin management. Subnational units are just as important as- if not more so than- nations, when it comes to crafting water policy and instituting whole-basin management regimes. GSRB allows for the inclusion of subnational units in global water resource planning and water policy decision making.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMPA21C0982P
- Keywords:
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- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4321 Climate impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 4329 Sustainable development;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES