Global Hydrobelts and Hydroregions: Improved Reporting Scale for Water
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Sci., 17, 1093–1111, 2013 Hydrology and Hydrology and www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/17/1093/2013/ doi:10.5194/hess-17-1093-2013 Earth System Earth System © Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Sciences Sciences Discussions Open Access Open Access Ocean Science Ocean Science Discussions Global hydrobelts and hydroregions: Open Access Open Access improved reporting scale for water-related issues? Solid Earth Solid Earth Discussions M. Meybeck1, M. Kummu2, and H. H. Durr¨ 3 1Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France 2 Water & Development Research Group, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland Open Access Open Access 3Ecohydrology Research Group, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada The Cryosphere The Cryosphere Discussions Correspondence to: M. Meybeck ([email protected]) Received: 13 July 2012 – Published in Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 3 August 2012 Revised: 12 February 2013 – Accepted: 12 February 2013 – Published: 13 March 2013 Abstract. Global-scale water issues such as its availability, global population at risk of severe water quality degradation. water needs or stress, or management, are mapped at various Our initial tests suggest that hydrobelt and hydroregion divi- resolutions and reported at many scales, mostly along polit- sions are often more appropriate than conventional continen- ical or continental boundaries. As such, they ignore the fun- tal or political divisions for the global analysis of river basins damental heterogeneity of hydroclimates and natural bound- within the Earth system and of water resources. aries of river basins. Here we describe the continental land- The GIS files of the hydrobelts and hydroregions masses at two levels: eight hydrobelts strictly limited by river are available at the supplement of this article and at basins, defined at a 300 (0.5◦) resolution, which are decom- doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.806957 as well as geotypes.net. posed on continents as 26 hydroregions. The belts were de- fined and delineated, based primarily on the annual average temperature (T ) and run-off (q), to maximise inter-belt dif- ferences and minimise intra-belt variability. 1 Introduction This new global puzzle defines homogeneous and near- contiguous entities with similar hydrological and thermal Mapping global water resources was first done for precip- regimes, glacial and postglacial basin histories, endorheism itation and run-off; the maps were at a very coarse resolu- distribution and sensitivity to climate variations. The mid- tion due to sparsely available data, a lack of global models latitude, dry and subtropical belts have northern and southern and a lack of satellite imagery. In 1964 the Soviet Academy analogues and a general symmetry can be observed for T and of Science in Moscow issued a novel work, the Physico- q between them. The boreal and equatorial belts are unique. geographic Atlas of the World (Gerasimov et al., 1964), Population density between belts and between the continents which presented a similar set of maps for precipitation and varies greatly, resulting in pronounced differences between run-off for each continent and for the Soviet Union. The the belts with analogues in both hemispheres. maps included relief, geology, climate, vegetation, etc., at Hydroregions (median size 4.7 M km2) are highly con- an unprecedented resolution (1/20 000 000). In 1975 Baum- trasted, with the average q ranging between 6 and gartner and Reichel published the World Water Balance with 1393 mm yr−1 and the average T between −9.7 and detailed maps and tables on precipitation, evaporation, and +26.3 ◦C, and a population density ranging from 0.7 to run-off for each continent as well as specific tables for latitu- 0.8 p km−2 for the North American boreal region and some dinal zones, and Soviet hydrologists (Korzoun et al., 1978) Australian hydroregions to 280 p km−2 for some Asian hy- established for UNESCO another description of the water droregions. The population/run-off ratio, normalised to a balance for each continent. Even though Baumgartner and reference pristine region, is used to map and quantify the Reichel (1975) considered drainage basins to oceans, ulti- mately none of these global-scale analyses took into account Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 1094 M. Meybeck et al.: Global hydrobelts and hydroregions the natural hydrographic entities delineated by river basins in zone catchments – termed COSCATs (Meybeck et al., 2006, their reporting and tabulations. 2007) – specific ocean basins, regional seas and estuarine Global hydrology outputs have changed markedly in the types (Meybeck and Durr,¨ 2009; Laruelle et al., 2010; Durr¨ last twenty years due to satellite imagery, global hydrologi- et al., 2011). cal models and geographic information systems (GIS). Sub- Similarly, the regionalisation of water-related issues has sequently, these three tools have made it possible (i) to map been increasingly studied based on more homogeneous the components of the hydrological balance at high resolu- hydro-climatic, political and/or socioeconomic regions. For tion (Vor¨ osmarty¨ et al., 2000c; Fekete et al., 2002; Alcamo instance, Asia has been divided into Eastern Asia, South- et al., 2003; Oki and Kanae, 2006); (ii) to delineate the surfi- ern Asia, Northern Asia and the Middle East using coun- cial river networks and/or the boundaries of river basins at a try aggregates (e.g. Kummu et al., 2010). Researchers have global scale, first at 2◦ (two arc degrees; around 200 km at the also recently clustered world river basins into 426 homoge- equator) (Probst, 1992; Probst et al., 1997) then at 300 (30 arc neous ecoregions (Abell et al., 2008), with catchment areas minutes or 0.5◦; around 50 km at the equator) (Vor¨ osmarty¨ et ranging from 23 km2 to 4.53 M km2 (average 311 000 km2) al., 2000a, b; Oki and Kanae, 2006) and finer, and the lakes on the basis of their fish populations. The largest basins, and wetland distributions (Lehner and Doll,¨ 2004); (iii) to which are more heterogeneous, are also fragmented, for ex- replace paper copies of the world hydrological atlases with ample, into 13 ecoregions for the Amazon River basin (Abell digital geospatial maps at various resolutions (Vor¨ osmarty¨ et et al., 2008). al., 2000a, b, c; Alcamo et al., 2003; Lehner and Doll,¨ 2004; Traditional global-scale reporting, however, faces multiple Oki and Kanae, 2006; van Beek et al., 2011); and (iv) to com- complications. Aggregating the results at a country level may bine water resources with other numerical maps, particularly smooth out major hydro-physical and social discrepancies population maps, resulting in the analysis of water needs and for the largest countries, such as China, Russia, the US, Aus- availability at high resolutions (Vor¨ osmarty¨ et al., 2000c; tralia, Canada or Brazil. Furthermore, it is difficult to com- Viviroli et al., 2007; Kummu et al., 2010; Wada et al., 2011). pare studies on different geopolitical entities when the polit- The analysis of global water-related issues, needing dis- ical situation is evolving, such as for the European Union crete river basins as the analysis unit, is now commonly per- or the former USSR. It is also difficult to analyse a great formed at 300 resolution (n = 60 000 cells, n = 6200 individ- number of entities just using tables: similarities and/or con- ual river basins) (Vor¨ osmarty¨ et al., 2000a, b) for global anal- trasts are not obvious when more than 50 entities are used, yses and higher resolution for regional analysis or specific while they are masked if only a very small number of objects questions. When multiple issues need to be compared, vari- (e.g. six continents) are used. Natural hydrological bound- ous spatial delineations and/or reporting formats have been aries, which delineate rivers basins, are now often stated to used; this has been done, for instance, for river water man- be more appropriate to analyse a society’s water consumption agement using various scales: (i) continents (Kulshreshtha, behaviour and manage its water-related issues (Millennium 1998; Vor¨ osmarty¨ et al., 2000c; Rockstrom¨ et al., 2009; Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; World Water Assessment Pro- Wada et al., 2011); (ii) economic and/or political regions gramme, 2009). (Falkenmark, 1997; Kulshreshtha, 1998; Arnell, 2004; Islam We postulate that both the analysis and tabulation of multi- et al., 2007; Kummu et al., 2010); (iii) countries (n = 100 to ple water-related