GloFAS Static Layers Overview

Layer showing the major rivers.

Major river basins of the world. Source: Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC). For more technical details see www.bafg.de

Lakes (the largest 463) and reservoirs (the largest 667) as included in the GloFAS model set up. Selection criteria are:
(1) lake surface area > 100km²;
(2) significant impact on river discharge;
(3) reservoir capacity > 0.5 km³.

Inundated areas for flood events with a return period of 100 years, based on GloFAS climatology. Permanent water bodies derived from the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database and from the Natural Earth lakes map.

Drainage network of the LISFLOOD model. Rivers are shown as they are represented in the model. Lines show connections between the model pixels above 500 km² drainage area. The larger drainage area is represented by both darkening colours and increasing line widths.

The map illustrates the potential impact of reservoirs included in GloFAS on river discharge at global scale. To provide a continuous estimate of the potential reservoir effect along river reaches, the ratio of reservoir volume to mean annual discharge was calculated for each grid cell. This ratio makes use of the upstream cumulative reservoir capacity [m3] and the cell-specific total volume of annual natural river discharge [m³].

Administrative regions merged using NUTS-2 or NUTS-3 classification from EUROSTAT and the region classification from GADM.