NARWidth Data Set

The North American River Width Data Set (NARWidth) is a comprehensive resource for planform morphometric measurements of North American rivers. Developed using advanced image processing algorithms applied to Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery, NARWidth provides critical data at approximately mean discharge. It is designed to support a wide array of scientific and engineering applications, including detailed hydrologic, hydraulic, and biogeochemical models. Additional information on its development is available, along with a related GRL article.

NARWidth v.0.1 features 6.7 million georeferenced river width measurements for rivers greater than or equal to 30 meters, alongside an additional 1.3 million flagged width measurements for connected reservoirs and lakes. This dataset notably covers rivers above 60°N, an area often lacking high-quality river data, while excluding very large lakes, ephemeral streams, deltaic systems, and human-made canals. It also incorporates a braiding index field, indicating the number of channels at each river cross-section for channels wider than 30 meters.

The data set is distributed in both ESRI Shapefile and Comma Separated Values (CSV) formats, with a recommended projection using the WGS84 datum. Each measurement location includes attributes such as river width (in meters), number of channels (braiding index), a reservoir flag (0 for river, 1 for reservoir/lake), and the latitude and longitude of the river centerline. Users are requested to cite the provided GRL article when utilizing this data in publications.