HydroSHEDS: Global Hydrographic Data for Watersheds, Rivers, and GIS Analysis
HydroSHEDS is a family of globally consistent hydrographic datasets developed by WWF and collaborators for watershed analysis, hydrological modeling, freshwater conservation, and other geospatial applications. It includes core raster layers such as digital elevation, conditioned elevation, flow direction, and flow accumulation; secondary vector products such as HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, and HydroLAKES; and enriched HydroATLAS tables containing hydro-environmental characteristics for basins, river reaches, and lakes. HydroSHEDS is valuable when an analysis needs a consistent drainage framework across countries or continents, but it is not a replacement for locally authoritative, high-resolution river, watershed, elevation, or regulatory datasets.
HydroSHEDS is best understood as a coordinated hydrographic data ecosystem rather than a single file or layer. Its products provide a common geographic structure for representing how water moves across the land surface: elevation supports drainage modeling, flow-direction and flow-accumulation grids describe modeled movement, catchment polygons organize upstream areas, and river and lake layers provide vector features for mapping and analysis. The project was initiated by WWF US in 2006 and has expanded into core, secondary, and associated products designed to work together across regional and global scales. (hydrosheds.org)
How EDK fits
For: Hydrologists, environmental scientists, conservation organizations, GIS analysts, Earth-observation researchers, infrastructure planners, humanitarian teams, and developers building geographic analyses that depend on drainage networks, watersheds, rivers, lakes, or upstream and downstream relationships.
HydroSHEDS is a strong example of how geographic data becomes more useful when physical features are represented in relation to one another. A river is not only a line on a map: it is connected to an upstream drainage area, downstream reaches, surrounding terrain, nearby lakes, and environmental conditions. HydroSHEDS supplies much of that relational structure through aligned raster and vector products. In a broader world-model context, this type of dataset can serve as the hydrographic foundation for finding physical water features, understanding their geographic context, and computing relationships such as which places drain toward a river, which assets lie within a watershed, or how infrastructure and population are distributed relative to water systems. HydroSHEDS itself does not provide a universal searchable model of every physical feature, and it should not be represented as an E2 capability. Its value is as an external hydrographic reference layer that can be combined with other location data when a geographic computation requires watershed or river context.
- •Watershed context for physical-world search: use HydroBASINS or related HydroSHEDS layers as a geographic frame for organizing roads, buildings, public assets, environmental features, or other mapped objects by upstream catchment.
- •Drainage-aware spatial computation: combine modeled flow direction, flow accumulation, river networks, and catchment boundaries with other location data to rank, filter, aggregate, or compare features according to their relationship to rivers and drainage systems.
- •Environmental and infrastructure analysis: connect water-system geography with roads, settlements, utility assets, construction activity, land cover, or service locations to study exposure, access, maintenance needs, or regional differences.
Dataset profile
Formats
GeoTIFF raster files
Esri Shapefile
Esri File Geodatabase
OGC GeoPackage for selected HydroSHEDS v2 vector products
Compressed ZIP archives containing tiled, continental, regional, or global data
Legacy BIL and GRID formats in the obsolete v1.0 archive
Access methods
Download product-specific files from the official HydroSHEDS website
Select by product, resolution, continent, region, global extent, or tile
Use official technical documentation to interpret layers and licensing
Use selected externally hosted copies such as Google Earth Engine only after verifying version and currency against official HydroSHEDS sources
Load files into QGIS, ArcGIS, GDAL-based workflows, GRASS, Whitebox, PostGIS, or compatible programming libraries
Quality and limits
HydroSHEDS v1 is less accurate above 60 degrees north because it relies on different and coarser elevation inputs in those regions.
Global consistency does not imply local survey-level accuracy.
Modeled flow paths, basins, and accumulation values should not automatically be treated as legal, surveyed, or regulatory boundaries.
HydroSHEDS does not provide live streamflow, current flood conditions, or complete local waterbody naming.
v1 and v2 products may differ in source elevation, processing, coverage, and geometry; mixing them requires explicit validation.
Large files, regional tiles, and product-specific formats can complicate ingestion and reproducibility.
Analysis workflows
Select a HydroBASINS level that matches the geographic scale of the question, then spatially join external features and aggregate results by catchment.
Use HydroRIVERS and HydroLAKES for proximity, inventory, map production, and river- or lake-centered spatial queries.
Use conditioned elevation, flow direction, and flow accumulation for custom drainage modeling and terrain-informed analysis.
Use HydroATLAS to compare hydro-environmental characteristics across basins, river reaches, or lakes.
Combine HydroSHEDS with roads, buildings, infrastructure, population, land cover, imagery, or environmental observations to analyze exposure, access, service coverage, and watershed context.
Document product version, release date, tile or region, coordinate reference system, resampling method, and any local validation.
For site-specific engineering, flood, permitting, or regulatory work, compare results with authoritative local hydrography, elevation, surveys, and official hazard products.
Value inside EDK
What HydroSHEDS contains
The HydroSHEDS ecosystem is organized into three broad categories. Core products are gridded layers derived from elevation and hydrologic processing. They include a digital elevation model, a hydrologically conditioned DEM, flow-direction grids, flow-accumulation grids, flow-length layers, land masks, and sink-related layers. These are useful when analysts need to build or inspect their own hydrologic models rather than relying only on prebuilt vector boundaries. (hydrosheds.org)
Secondary products convert the core hydrographic structure into commonly used vector layers. HydroBASINS provides nested catchment polygons at multiple Pfafstetter levels, HydroRIVERS provides river-reach lines, and HydroLAKES provides lake polygons. HydroATLAS extends these products with hydro-environmental attributes. Its BasinATLAS, RiverATLAS, and LakeATLAS components describe approximately 1.0 million sub-basins, 8.5 million river reaches, and 1.4 million lakes, with attributes covering categories such as hydrology, physiography, climate, land cover and use, soils and geology, and anthropogenic influences. (hydrosheds.org)
- •Core rasters: elevation, conditioned elevation, flow direction, flow accumulation, flow length, land mask, and related grids.
- •Vector hydrography: catchment boundaries, river reaches, and lake shorelines.
- •Hydro-environmental attributes: basin, river, and lake characteristics distributed through HydroATLAS.
- •Associated layers: complementary water, river, lake, wastewater, and hydrographic datasets.
Geography, resolution, and update cadence
HydroSHEDS v1 is intended as a seamless global framework. Its core products were derived primarily from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation model at 3 arc-seconds, approximately 90 meters at the equator, with lower-resolution source data used in regions north of 60 degrees north latitude where SRTM coverage was unavailable. WWF explicitly cautions that HydroSHEDS is less accurate in those northern regions and that the global products are not equivalent to local, high-resolution river or catchment maps. (hydrosheds.org)
The v1 core download service provides GeoTIFF products at resolutions from 3 arc-seconds to 6 arc-minutes. Depending on the layer and resolution, files are available as 10-by-10-degree tiles, continental tiles, or global products. (hydrosheds.org)
- •Global v1 framework with known quality limitations above 60 degrees north.
- •v1 core rasters: approximately 90-meter native-equivalent resolution at the equator for the finest products.
- •v2: approximately 30-meter 1-arc-second core rasters, initially released for the Americas.
- •No single fixed refresh schedule applies across all HydroSHEDS products.
Formats and access methods
HydroSHEDS core layers are distributed primarily as GeoTIFF rasters. The download pages organize files by product type, resolution, and geographic extent, with large continental and global archives as well as finer tiled downloads. Older BIL, GRID, and legacy shapefile archives exist, but the project identifies the original v1.0 formats as obsolete and recommends the v1.1 GeoTIFF products for users who do not have a specific legacy requirement. (hydrosheds.org)
Vector products are distributed in formats that include Esri Shapefile and geodatabase formats. HydroSHEDS v2 additionally provides OGC GeoPackage files. HydroATLAS documentation identifies geographic coordinates using WGS 84 and distributes data in compressed archives containing geodatabase and Shapefile layers. Large global files may be split into regional tiles because of file-size constraints, particularly for Shapefile distribution. (hydrosheds.org)
- •Raster formats: GeoTIFF, with multiple resolutions and tile schemes.
- •Vector formats: Shapefile, Esri geodatabase, and, for HydroSHEDS v2, GeoPackage.
- •Access: official product download pages, with some products mirrored in external platforms.
- •Common software: QGIS, ArcGIS, GDAL-based tools, GRASS, Whitebox, PostGIS, and other standard GIS environments.
Suitable GIS and spatial-analysis workflows
A basic watershed workflow begins by selecting the appropriate HydroBASINS level for the analysis scale, clipping the basin polygons to the study area, and joining external observations or assets to those polygons. The result can support basin-level summaries of roads, buildings, population, land cover, environmental indicators, or infrastructure.
For raster-based hydrology, analysts can use the conditioned DEM, flow direction, and flow accumulation layers to inspect drainage structure, identify modeled high-accumulation corridors, derive drainage thresholds, or compare terrain and water-system patterns. Results should be validated against local hydrography when the analysis concerns a specific site, engineering decision, floodplain, permit, or regulatory boundary.
- •Delineate and summarize features by nested watershed.
- •Compute proximity to modeled rivers, lakes, or drainage corridors.
- •Aggregate environmental, infrastructure, or population data by catchment.
- •Use flow accumulation and elevation layers as inputs to custom hydrologic modeling.
- •Compare hydro-environmental attributes across basins, river reaches, or lakes.
License, strengths, and tradeoffs
HydroSHEDS licensing is product-specific. The official core-product page states that HydroSHEDS v1 core products are freely available for scientific, educational, and commercial use under a specific license agreement included in the technical documentation. HydroATLAS is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Other products may have their own terms, so users should check the product page and retain the required attribution and citation information. (hydrosheds.org)
- •Strength: consistent global hydrographic structure across many countries and regions.
- •Strength: coordinated raster and vector products support both custom modeling and ready-made GIS analysis.
- •Strength: nested catchments and enriched HydroATLAS attributes enable regional comparison and aggregation.
- •Tradeoff: global consistency comes with lower local accuracy than authoritative, high-resolution national or municipal hydrography.
- •Tradeoff: v1 and v2 are not interchangeable by default, and v2 coverage is still being released incrementally.
- •Tradeoff: large archives, regional tiles, legacy formats, and product-specific licensing require careful data management.
- •Tradeoff: HydroSHEDS models and organizes hydrography; it does not by itself provide live streamflow, current flood status, legal wetland determinations, or complete local waterbody names.
Questions teams ask
Is HydroSHEDS one dataset or a collection of datasets?
It is a collection of coordinated products. The core layers are gridded elevation and hydrologic rasters. Secondary products include HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, HydroLAKES, and HydroATLAS. Associated products add complementary water, river, lake, and hydro-environmental layers.
Does HydroSHEDS provide global coverage?
HydroSHEDS v1 is designed as a global framework, but its quality is lower in regions above 60 degrees north because the underlying source elevation data differ there. HydroSHEDS v2 is newer and currently has an initial release for the Americas rather than complete global coverage.
What format should I use for HydroSHEDS in QGIS or Python?
GeoTIFF is the main format for core raster layers. Vector products may be available as Shapefile, Esri geodatabase, or GeoPackage, depending on the product and version. GDAL-compatible tools, QGIS, Python geospatial libraries, GRASS, Whitebox, and PostGIS can work with these formats, but large archives may require tiling, mosaicking, or database loading.
Can HydroSHEDS be used for flood-risk or engineering decisions?
It can support screening, regional modeling, watershed context, and exploratory analysis, but it should not automatically substitute for local elevation, surveyed hydrography, hydraulic models, official flood maps, or regulatory data. Local validation is essential when results affect safety, design, permitting, insurance, or compliance.
Is HydroSHEDS free for commercial use?
The official HydroSHEDS page states that core v1 products are freely available for scientific, educational, and commercial use under a specific license agreement. HydroATLAS is published under CC BY 4.0. Because terms differ by product, users should review the applicable product page and technical documentation before redistribution or commercial deployment.
Keep exploring
hydrosheds analysis workflow
A focused workflow for preparing HydroSHEDS layers, selecting scales, validating drainage relationships, and carrying out watershed and river-network analysis.
hydrosheds download and formats
A practical reference for HydroSHEDS downloads, GeoTIFF and vector formats, tiles, product versions, and access considerations.
global surface water
A complementary Earth-observation dataset for comparing HydroSHEDS drainage structure with mapped surface-water occurrence and change.
Sources
HydroSHEDS official overview
Authoritative description of the project, product categories, v1 source data, v2 development, geographic limitations, and intended uses.
Open sourceHydroSHEDS core products and downloads
Official information about core-product scope, licensing, technical documentation, and access.
Open sourceHydroSHEDS core data downloads
Official download information for v1.1 GeoTIFF layers, resolutions, geographic tiles, and legacy-format guidance.
Open sourceHydroSHEDS v2 for the Americas
Official announcement describing the July 2026 v2 release, 1-arc-second rasters, Americas coverage, and vector formats.
Open sourceHydroATLAS official product page
Authoritative description of BasinATLAS, RiverATLAS, LakeATLAS, attributes, data volumes, formats, and CC BY 4.0 licensing.
Open sourceHydroSHEDS FAQ
Official guidance on formats, software compatibility, external copies, product-specific licensing, and update status.
Open source