Study Provides New Global Estimates Of Rivers

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A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of the world's river water storage and discharge levels.

Data on how much water courses through Earth's rivers, the rates at which it is flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures have fluctuated over time provides crucial information for understanding the planet's water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies, says NASA, which led the research.

The results of the study, conducted by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, was recently published in Nature Geoscience.

Although researchers have made numerous estimates over the years of how much water flows from rivers into the ocean, estimates of the volume of water rivers collectively hold — known as storage — have been few and more uncertain, said JPL's Cedric David, a co-author of the study.

He likened the situation to spending from a checking account without knowing the balance. "We don't know how much water is in the account, and population growth and climate change are further complicating matters," David said.

The study identified the Amazon basin as the region with the most river storage, holding about 204 cubic miles of water — roughly 38 percent of the global estimate. The same basin also discharges the most water to the ocean: 1,629 cubic miles per year. That is 18 percent of the global discharge to the ocean.

The novel approach to estimating river water storage and discharge also identifies regions marked by 'fingerprints' of intense water use.

NASA says the researchers found intense human water use in parts of the Colorado, Amazon, and Orange river basins, as well as the Murray-Darling basin in southeastern Australia.

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