Greenland Ice Sheet Hydrologic Sub-basins: 293 Modeled Drainage Areas

293 hydrologic sub-basins of the Greenland Ice Sheet are modeled in this GIS polygon shapefile dataset. It was created by Lewis and Smith (2009) using 5 km digital elevation models and ESRI ArcGIS hydrological tools to estimate a hydraulic potentiometric surface. The dataset is documented by a peer-reviewed journal article in Hydrological Processes.

Use Cases

• Modeling surface runoff and discharge pathways from the Greenland Ice Sheet using the basin network.
• Analyzing the relationship between ice-surface topography, bedrock topography, and sub-glacial hydrology.
• Studying the spatial distribution and scale of meltwater catchments, with basins under 100 km² excluded.

Strengths

• Dataset is derived from peer-reviewed methodology published in Hydrological Processes (Lewis and Smith, 2009).
• Basin network was created using a 5 km resolution potentiometric grid accounting for ice overburden pressure.
• The 293 final polygons represent a curated set, having removed basins smaller than 100 km² and those outside the ice sheet.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file sizes, and column names are not provided by any source.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata: one source lists 2000-12-31, while others list 2026-03 13.

Provenance

Source

Lewis, Sarah and Laurence Smith (2009), using DEMs from Bamber et al. (2001).

Collection Method

Created using hydrological tools in ESRI ArcGIS (ArcInfo 9.2) on a 5 km potentiometric grid derived from ice-surface and bedrock topography.

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:26:01.710559

Geography

Greenland Ice Sheet.