Checking for missing content type metadata ...
This resource contains content types with missing metadata required to make it public or discoverable. Show missing content type metadata.
Click on the edit button ( ) below to edit this resource.
Checking for non-preferred file/folder path names (may take a long time depending on the number of files/folders) ...
This resource contains some files/folders that have non-preferred characters in their name. Show non-conforming files/folders.
This resource contains content types with files that need to be updated to match with metadata changes. Show content type files that need updating.
| Authors: |
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Owners: |
|
This resource does not have an owner who is an active HydroShare user. Contact CUAHSI (help@cuahsi.org) for information on this resource. |
| Type: | Resource | |
| Storage: | The size of this resource is 209.5 MB | |
| Created: | Jul 20, 2026 at 8:54 p.m. (UTC) | |
| Last updated: | Sep 09, 2026 at 4:46 p.m. (UTC) | |
| Citation: | See how to cite this resource | |
| Content types: | Single File Content |
| Sharing Status: | Public |
|---|---|
| Views: | 93 |
| Downloads: | 9 |
| +1 Votes: | Be the first one to this. |
| Comments: | No comments (yet) |
Abstract
This HydroShare resource contains 35 hydrologic perceptual model illustrations, one for each hydrologic province across North America, together with a shared legend and accompanying province fact sheets. The perceptual model illustrations characterize each province in terms of climate, land cover, subsurface conditions, and the dominant hydrologic fluxes and flow-path types that control water partitioning, storage, movement, and release. The legend defines the symbols and icons used consistently across all illustrations. The province fact sheets provide complementary regional characteristics derived from the processing and synthesis of multiple geospatial datasets, including snow conditions, temperature, precipitation, average soil thickness, average sedimentary-deposit thickness, agricultural extent and type, permafrost, burned area, lakes, population density, mean annual runoff, and land-cover types. To maintain readability, the fact sheets are organized into two companion PDF documents, each containing 35 pages, with one page per hydrologic province; the corresponding pages in the two PDFs together present the complete set of regional characteristics for each province.
Subject Keywords
Coverage
Spatial
Content
readme.md
Resource Contents
The illustrations are organized into five domain folders (Northern, Western, Central, Eastern, and Islands) so that the perceptual models for provinces within each domain are stored together. For example, perceptual models for provinces in the Northern Domain, along with the map showing the names and locations of those provinces, are located in the NorthernDomain folder.
The resource includes:
- 35 PNG perceptual model illustrations, one for each hydrologic province.
- Five domain folders:
- NorthernDomain
- WesternDomain
- CentralDomain
- EasternDomain
- IslandsDomain
- One shared legend PNG file explaining the symbols and icons used in the perceptual models.
- Five PNG files showing reference maps for provinces in each domain.
- Two companion fact-sheet PDFs:
- Province_Regional_Characteristics_Part_1.pdf
- Province_Regional_Characteristics_Part_2.pdf
The two PDF files each contain 35 pages, with one page per province. Matching pages across the two files should be viewed together to obtain the complete set of regional characteristics for a province.
The fact sheets summarize regional characteristics derived from the processing and synthesis of geospatial datasets, including snow conditions, temperature, precipitation, average soil thickness, average sedimentary-deposit thickness, agricultural extent or type, permafrost, burned area, lakes, population density, mean annual runoff, and land-cover or land types.
Intended Use
These illustrations and fact sheets may be used to:
- understand and compare dominant hydrologic processes among provinces;
- support interpretation of regional hydrologic behavior;
- provide visual context for hydrologic modeling and watershed analysis;
- support education, training, and scientific communication;
- inform discussions of water partitioning, storage, flow paths, and runoff generation; and
- support presentations, reports, publications, and outreach materials.
File Format Notes
The perceptual model illustrations and legend are provided as PNG files. These files are suitable for viewing, presentations, reports, websites, and other communication products.
The province fact sheets are provided as PDF files. Each PDF contains one page per hydrologic province, and the corresponding province pages in Part 1 and Part 2 should be interpreted together. The two fact-sheet PDFs are separated only for readability and page-layout purposes. They do not represent different classification levels, themes, or scientific categories.
Organization Notes
PProvince illustrations are organized according to their associated high-level hydrologic domains. Users can identify the relevant domain and open the corresponding folder to locate the perceptual model for a specific province. The HydroShare resource by Knoben et al. (2026) provides geospatial representations of the domain and province boundaries, along with a README describing the classification and boundary organization.
Citation and Attribution
When using or adapting materials from this resource, cite the HydroShare resource using the citation provided on the resource landing page.
When reproducing an individual perceptual model, fact-sheet page, or legend, retain the original attribution. If any figure is modified, cropped, relabeled, or otherwise adapted, clearly indicate that it has been modified from the original HydroShare resource.
Data Sources and References for Province Fact Sheets
The regional characteristics presented in the province fact sheets were obtained or derived from the following geospatial datasets and published sources.
| Regional characteristic | Dataset or source | Use in the fact sheets | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Landsat-Derived Global Rainfed and Irrigated-Cropland Product, 30 m (LGRIP30), and Global Cropland-Extent Product, 30 m (GCEP30) | Used to characterize agricultural extent and rainfed or irrigated cropland types. | Thenkabail, P. S., et al. (2021). Global Cropland-Extent Product at 30-m Resolution (GCEP30) Derived from Landsat Satellite Time-Series Data for the Year 2015 Using Multiple Machine-Learning Algorithms on Google Earth Engine Cloud. USGS Professional Paper. https://doi.org/10.3133/pp1868 Teluguntla, P., et al. (2023). Landsat-Derived Global Rainfed and Irrigated-Cropland Product 30 m V001. NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/COMMUNITY/LGRIP/LGRIP30.001 |
| Annual burned fraction | Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), United States, and National Burned Area Composite (NBAC), Canada | Used to estimate the fraction of each province affected by wildfire. | Eidenshink, J., Schwind, B., Brewer, K., et al. (2007). A project for monitoring trends in burn severity. Fire Ecology, 3, 3–21. https://doi.org/10.4996/fireecology.0301003 Canadian Forest Service. National Burned Area Composite. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre. Accessed August 6, 2025. https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca Hall, R. J., et al. (2020). Generating annual estimates of forest fire disturbance in Canada: The National Burned Area Composite. International Journal of Wildland Fire. https://doi.org/10.1071/WF19201 Skakun, R. S., et al. (2021). Area burned adjustments to historical wildland fires in Canada. Environmental Research Letters, 16, 064014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abfb2c Skakun, R., et al. (2022). Extending the National Burned Area Composite time series of wildfires in Canada. Remote Sensing, 14, 3050. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14133050 |
| Continuous and discontinuous permafrost | Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions, Version 2 | Used to characterize the extent of continuous and discontinuous permafrost within each province. | Brown, J., Ferrians, O., Heginbottom, J. A., and Melnikov, E. (2002). Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions, Version 2. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.7265/skbg-kf16. Accessed September 14, 2024. |
| Elevation and slope | MERIT Hydro | Elevation was obtained from the dataset, and slope was derived from the elevation data. | Yamazaki, D., Ikeshima, D., Sosa, J., Bates, P. D., Allen, G. H., and Pavelsky, T. M. (2019). MERIT Hydro: A high-resolution global hydrography map based on latest topography dataset. Water Resources Research, 55, 5053–5073. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR024873 |
| Lakes | HydroLAKES | Used to characterize the presence and extent of lakes within each province. | Messager, M. L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., and Schmitt, O. (2016). Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach. Nature Communications, 7, 13603. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13603 |
| Land cover | MODIS land-cover data | Used to characterize dominant land-cover types. This includes variables with names prefixed by land_. |
Friedl, M. and Sulla-Menashe, D. Complete dataset title, version, year, and DOI should be added before publication. |
| Population density | Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4), Revision 11 | Used to characterize human population density within each province. | Center for International Earth Science Information Network–CIESIN–Columbia University. (2017). Gridded Population of the World, Version 4: Population Density, Revision 11, Version 4.11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center. https://doi.org/10.7927/H49C6VHW. Accessed September 22, 2025. |
| Precipitation, temperature, and snow | WorldClim 2 | Used to characterize regional precipitation, temperature, and snow-related climate conditions. | Fick, S. E. and Hijmans, R. J. (2017). WorldClim 2: New 1-km spatial-resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37, 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086 |
| Runoff coefficient | Global Runoff Reconstruction (GRUN) | Used to characterize runoff and calculate or summarize runoff-related regional metrics. | Ghiggi, G., Humphrey, V., Seneviratne, S. I., and Gudmundsson, L. (2019). GRUN: An observation-based global gridded runoff dataset from 1902 to 2014. Earth System Science Data, 11, 1655–1674. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1655-2019 |
| Soil and sedimentary-deposit thickness | Global 1-km Gridded Thickness of Soil, Regolith, and Sedimentary Deposit Layers | Used to characterize average soil depth and sedimentary-deposit thickness within each province. | Pelletier, J., Broxton, P., Hazenberg, P., Zeng, X., Troch, P., Niu, G., Williams, Z., Brunke, M., and Gochis, D. (2016). Global 1-km Gridded Thickness of Soil, Regolith, and Sedimentary Deposit Layers. ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1304 |
| Wetlands | Global Land Cover and Land Use 2019 (GLCLU2019) | Used to estimate wetland extent through the wetland_frac variable. These values may be overestimated in some regions and should be interpreted cautiously. |
Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Pickens, A. H., Tyukavina, A., Hernandez-Serna, A., Zalles, V., Turubanova, S., Kommareddy, I., Stehman, S. V., Song, X.-P., and Kommareddy, A. (2022). Global land-use extent and dispersion within natural land cover using Landsat data. Environmental Research Letters, 17, 034050. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac46ec |
Note: The MODIS land-cover citation is incomplete and should be completed before the HydroShare resource is published.
Related Resources
| This resource is referenced by | ADD LINK TO PAPER 2 |
| This resource is described by | THE LINK TO THE WEBSITE |
| Title | Owners | Sharing Status | My Permission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supporting Data for Hydrological Perceptual Models Across North America | Wouter Knoben · Irene Garousi-Nejad | Public & Shareable | Open Access |
Credits
Funding Agencies
This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
| Agency Name | Award Title | Award Number |
|---|---|---|
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Funded as part of the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) | NA22NWS4320003 |
Contributors
People or Organizations that contributed technically, materially, financially, or provided general support for the creation of the resource's content but are not considered authors.
| Name | Organization | Address | Phone | Author Identifiers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HILARY'S STUDENT(S) |
How to Cite
This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Comments
There are currently no comments
New Comment