The Global Dam Watch database of river barrier and reservoir information for large-scale applications
The Global Dam Watch database unifies global records of river barriers and reservoirs, mapping 41,145 barriers and 35,295 reservoirs with 7,420 km³ storage and 304,600 km² surface area, enabling consistent large‑scale environmental analyses.
Subject Tags
- Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
- Rivers
- Fisheries
Abstract
There are millions of river barriers worldwide, ranging from wooden locks to concrete dams, many of which form associated impoundments to store water in small ponds or large reservoirs. Besides their benefits, there is growing recognition of important environmental and social trade-offs related to these artificial structures. However, global datasets describing their characteristics and geographical distribution are often biased towards particular regions or specific applications, such as hydropower dams affecting fish migration, and are thus not globally consistent. Here, we present a new river barrier and reservoir database developed by the Global Dam Watch (GDW) consortium that integrates, harmonizes, and augments existing global datasets to support large-scale analyses. Data curation involved extensive quality control processes to create a single, globally consistent data repository of instream barriers and reservoirs that are co-registered to a digital river network. Version 1.0 of the GDW database contains 41,145 barrier locations and 35,295 associated reservoir polygons representing a cumulative storage capacity of 7,420 km3 and an artificial terrestrial surface water area of 304,600 km2.
Citation
Lehner, B., Beames, P., Mulligan, M., Zarfl, C., De Felice, L., van Soesbergen, A., Thieme, M., Garcia de Leaniz, C., Anand, M., Belletti, B. and Brauman, K.A., 2024. The Global Dam Watch database of river barrier and reservoir information for large-scale applications. Scientific Data, 11(1), p.1069. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03752-9
TNC Authors
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Jonathan Higgins
The Nature Conservancy