SWOT_L2_HR_RiverSP_D: Global River Reach Hydrologic Measurements from Satellite

The SWOT Level 2 River Single-Pass Vector Data Product provides hydrologic measurements for predefined river reaches and nodes, derived from high-resolution radar observations by the KaRIn instrument on the SWOT satellite. It reports water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge estimates for each reach, with data aggregated from pixel detections and referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid. Data are distributed as ESRI shapefiles, aligned to GIS and hydrologic standards, and are produced by the POCLOUD organization.

Use Cases

• Analyzing inland water dynamics based on reach-scale water surface elevation and slope measurements.
• Estimating river discharge based on consensus and algorithm-specific discharge estimates, both unconstrained and gauge-constrained.
• Monitoring river changes over time based on time-series measurements of width and area.
• Integrating hydrologic variables with a predefined river network based on the Prior River Database (PRD) geometry and topology.

Strengths

• Provides multiple hydrologic variables per reach, including water surface elevation, slope, width, area, and discharge.
• Data are corrected for geoid height and solid Earth, load, and pole tides.
• Enables direct integration with a globally defined river network via the Prior River Database (PRD).
• Includes both reach-level (polyline) and node-level (point) data in standard ESRI shapefile format.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata (POCLOUD organization), derived from the SWOT satellite's KaRIn instrument.

Collection Method

Hydrologic measurements derived from high-resolution radar observations and aggregated from lower-level pixel detections.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

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