SWOT Satellite River Vector Data: Global Water Surface Elevation and Discharge

SWOT Level 2 River Single-Pass Vector Data Product provides hydrologic measurements for predefined global river reaches and nodes. The data is derived from high-resolution radar observations by the KaRIn instrument aboard the SWOT satellite and includes water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge estimates. Data are distributed by POCLOUD via NASA Earthdata and are formatted as ESRI shapefiles for integration with GIS.

Use Cases

• Analyzing inland water dynamics and monitoring river changes over time based on reach-scale water surface elevation and width.
• Estimating river discharge for hydrological modeling based on consensus and gauge-constrained algorithm outputs.
• Integrating satellite-derived river network data with GIS systems for basin-scale analysis based on the Prior River Database (PRD) geometry.
• Studying global river slope and area variations for climate impact assessments based on aggregated pixel detections.

Strengths

• Data includes multiple hydrologic variables per reach: water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge.
• Measurements are corrected for geoid height and solid Earth, load, and pole tides, referencing the WGS84 ellipsoid.
• Product structure includes two distinct shapefiles for river reaches (polylines) and nodes (points) with associated metadata.
• Discharge estimates are provided in both unconstrained and historically gauge-constrained versions.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

POCLOUD via NASA Earthdata (nasa_earthdata platform).

Collection Method

Derived from high-resolution radar observations by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) aboard the SWOT satellite, aggregated from lower-level pixel detections.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

Global coverage, with each granule covering a single satellite pass over one or more continents.