DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18338984
title: GLORIN – GLOBAL LONG AND LARGE RIVERS INVENTORY

description: The GLORIN (Global LOng and Large Rivers INventory) database is a global, vector-based river network constructed using key geomorphometric parameters such as river length, mean wetted width, and longitudinal slope.

The dataset includes all rivers longer than 400 km, classified as Long Rivers (LOR), and those longer than 400 km with a mean wetted width exceeding 150 m, classified as Large Rivers (LAR). For validation, we used Google and ESRI basemaps as well as the GRIT and OSM databases, to ensure an accurate source-to-sink representation. Mean wetted width was computed from orthogonal cross-sections generated at 50 km intervals along each river. Lakes and reservoirs were excluded from the cross-section calculations to avoid distortion. The resulting width values represent actual wetted widths rather than bankfull widths.

Longitudinal slope was derived in Google Earth Engine using the Copernicus GLO-30 DEM, calculated along the full river course with a 3 km buffer applied to the centerline. The final network topology is provided as ESRI Shapefile layers with corresponding attribute information. Additionally, separate files reporting rivers for each region are provided, based on the World Continent shapefile from ArcGIS Hub.

Regions

Vector files for Long Rivers (LOR) and Large Rivers (LAR) are provided for 6 global regions. Below are the details of each region, including river counts, river ID range, and corresponding projected coordinate system used. All files are also available in a common equal-area projection (EPSG:8857).






River_ID



Continent



LOR (No. of Rivers)



LAR (No. of Rivers)



Projected Coordinate System Used



Common Projected Coordinate System Used





100001



Africa



135



86



EPSG: 102022 - Africa Alberts Equal Area Conic



EPSG: 8857 - WGS 84 / Equal Earth Greenwich





200001



Asia



385



210



EPSG: 27703 - WGS 84 / Equi7 Asia





300001



Europe



107



46



EPSG: 3035 - ETRS89-extended / LAEA Europe





400001



North America



176



120



EPSG: 102008 - North America Albers Equal Area Conic





500001



South America



226



112



EPSG: 102033 - South America Albers Equal Area Conic





600001



Australia and Oceania



21



6



EPSG: 27706 - WGS 84 / Equi7 Oceania





Total No. of Rivers



1050



580

 


 





Attribute description of the layers:








Name



Data Type



Description





River_ID



Integer64



Global river identifier





Continent



String



Continent name





River_Name



String



River name from OSM (English, where available). Not available river names are marked as NODATA





Len_km



Real



River length in kilometres





MeanWid_m



Real



Mean wetted width based on orthogonal cross sections at 50km interval





MeanSlo_d



Real



Mean Longitudinal Slope of the entire river in degrees derived from DEM






Underlying sources:

- SWORD: https://zenodo.org/records/15299138

- Google and ESRI Satellite Basemaps

- Global River Topology (GRIT): https://zenodo.org/records/11219313

- OSM waterways: https://www.openstreetmap.org

- Copernicus GLO-30 Global DEM: https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/explore-data/data-collections/copernicus-contributing-missions/collections-description/COP-DEM

 

File Naming Convention

All vector files follow a standardized naming structure: <Region>_<Category>_<Projection>_<version>.{shp, dbf, cpg, shx, prj, qmd}

Where:

Region = Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania

Category = LOR or LAR

Projection = EPSG code (region-specific or EPSG8857)

Example:

Africa_LOR_EPSG102022_v01.shp

Africa_LAR_EPSG8857_v01.shp

Asia_LOR_EPSG27703_v01.shp

Europe_LAR_EPSG8857_v01.shp