Spatially consistent physical characteristics of UK rivers: 1-km data

Abstract

The physical river characteristics datasets described here provide spatially consistent information to support hydrological and inundation modelling at a 1 km × 1 km resolution across the United Kingdom, on the British National Grid. The datasets of physical river characteristics provide gridded datasets (outflow drainage directions, catchment areas, widths of bankfull rivers and depths of bankfull rivers) and a comma-separated table of NRFA (National River Flow Archive) gauging station locations. These datasets are derived from a range of sources: outflow drainage directions, catchment area and bankfull river widths are derived from existing higher resolution datasets, whereas bankfull river depths were harder to source and instead are derived from sparse historical measurements. The new gridded datasets provide a derived value for each UK land cell on the British National Grid (BNG). The comma-separated NRFA gauging station locations table provides the most appropriate locations of 1,499 river flow gauging stations on the 1 km resolution grids, together with the approximate error in the 1 km × 1 km gridded delineation of the upstream catchment area. This article explains how UK-wide 1-km grids of these variables were estimated, their format and how to use them. The data are available from the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC).