Global River Hydraulic Measurements from SWOT Satellite

SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_D provides water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge estimates for predefined global river reaches and nodes, derived from high-resolution KaRIn radar interferometer data. The product is defined by the Prior River Database (PRD) and is distributed as ESRI shapefiles for GIS integration. Data is updated as recently as March 2026, though the authoritative source is not specified.

Use Cases

• Large-scale hydrologic modeling using river reach attributes like water surface elevation, slope, and width.
• River discharge estimation and validation using algorithm-specific and gauge-constrained discharge variables.
• Monitoring inland water dynamics and river changes over time with reach-scale variables aggregated from pixel detections.
• GIS-based water resource management and basin monitoring by integrating shapefiles with the PRD-defined river network topology.

Strengths

• Provides multiple discharge estimates, including consensus and algorithm-specific calculations, both unconstrained and constrained by historical gauge data.
• Measurements are derived from high-resolution KaRIn radar observations and corrected for geoid height and solid Earth tides.
• Data is structured for direct GIS integration via ESRI shapefiles (polylines for reaches, points for nodes) with aligned metadata.

Limitations

• The dataset's size, row count, and specific author are not provided across the sources.
• Platforms disagree on file formats, with shared metadata listing JPEG, BIN, ISO, HTML, PDF, which conflicts with the description's mention of shapefiles.
• Geographic coverage is global but dependent on the predefined PRD river network, which may not include all rivers.

Provenance

Source

Derived from observations by the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) aboard the SWOT satellite.

Collection Method

Measurements are aggregated from lower-level pixel detections (PIXC product) assigned to hydrologic features via the auxiliary PIXCVec product, based on the Prior River Database (PRD).

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-03-12

Geography

Global river basins, with granules covering single satellite passes over one or more continents.