The tandem rise in satellite-based observations and computing power has changed the way we (can) see rivers across the Earth’s surface. Global datasets of river and river network characteristics at unprecedented resolutions are becoming common enough that the sheer amount of available information presents problems itself. Fully exploiting this new knowledge requires linking these geospatial datasets to each other within the context of a river network. In order to cope with this wealth of information, we are developing Veins of the Earth (VotE), a flexible system designed to synthesize knowledge about rivers and their networks into an adaptable and readily-usable form. VotE is not itself a dataset, but rather a database of relationships linking existing datasets that allows for rapid comparison and exports of river networks at arbitrary resolutions. VotE’s underlying river network (and drainage basins) is extracted from MERIT-Hydro. We link within VotE a newly-compiled dam dataset, streamflow gages from the GRDC, and published global river network datasets characterizing river widths, slopes, and intermittency. We highlight VotE’s utility with a demonstration of how vector-based river networks can be exported at any requested resolution, a global comparison of river widths from three independent datasets, and an example of computing watershed characteristics by coupling VotE to Google Earth Engine. Future efforts will focus on including real-time datasets such as SWOT river discharges and ReaLSAT reservoir areas.

Watersheds serve as natural spatial boundaries whose characteristics are often indicators of the hydrologic processes within them. Watershed characteristics are frequently used as predictors, parameters, or proxies in models of hydrologic and ecologic dynamics. Developments in DEMs over the past decade have resulted in elevation data spanning the globe that allows watershed delineation at arbitrary locations. In tandem, satellite-based observations and large-scale modeling efforts provide many sources of near-global watershed characteristics, e.g. topography, soil types, vegetation, climate, permafrost extent, and many more. However, with growing data availability comes a growing need for tools that can rapidly query and summarize them. We developed River and Basin Profiler (RaBPro), a Python module providing a pipeline to delineate drainage basins for any point on Earth and calculate watershed statistics for practically any geospatial raster dataset. RaBPro makes use of the MERIT-Hydro or HydroBASINS datasets to define watershed polygons, which can be exported in GeoJSON or ESRI shapefile format for further use in GIS software. RaBPro will also generate streamlines and river elevation profiles. Finally, RaBPro calculates statistics over delineated basins using Google Earth Engine (GEE). By taking advantage of GEE’s vast dataset archive and distributed computing system, RaBPro can quickly compute many statistics over even very large basins efficiently and without the need for storing large geo-rasters locally. Additionally, users may upload their own datasets to GEE and create custom statistic functions.