Methods, data and applied research
Publications, project updates and technical perspectives from Confluvio.
- 2026
HydroSHEDS v2.0: a new global hydrography
Refined global river networks and catchment delineations derived from TanDEM-X elevation data.
News, July 7, 2026
Recent progress in harmonizing geospatial dam and reservoir information at global scale to aid in water resources planning
The Global Dam Watch database harmonizes more than 40,000 dam and reservoir records and co-registers them to a digital river network to support water resources planning.
Publication, 2026
- 2025
Living Planet Symposium: the new EU-Hydro 2.0
An introduction to the next-generation reference hydrographic dataset for Europe.
Publication, June 23, 2025
Mapping the world's inland surface waters: an upgrade to the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD v2)
GLWD v2.0 harmonizes satellite and ground-based datasets into a global map of lakes, rivers and wetlands at roughly 500-metre resolution, covering about 18.2 million km² of wetland.
Publication, 2025
- 2024
Understanding the threats to fish migration: applying the Global Swimways concept to the Lower Mekong
This study applies the Global Swimways concept to the Lower Mekong, identifying migration routes that are critical for fish and the pressures that threaten them.
Publication, 2024
- 2023
Balancing renewable energy and river resources by moving from individual assessments of hydropower projects to energy system planning
The paper argues that moving from individual hydropower project assessments to energy system planning can balance renewable energy expansion with the protection of river resources.
Publication, 2023
- 2022
Global hydro-environmental river characteristics
HydroATLAS provides standardized environmental attributes for watersheds and river reaches worldwide.
Publication, April 1, 2022
Identifying the current and future status of freshwater connectivity corridors in the Amazon Basin
The study maps freshwater connectivity corridors in the Amazon Basin and shows how proposed dams could reduce the free-flowing status of rivers important to long-distance migratory species.
Publication, 2022
Distribution and characteristics of wastewater treatment plants within the global river network
HydroWASTE is a spatially explicit global database of 58,502 wastewater treatment plants, georeferenced to a high-resolution river network.
Publication, 2022
- 2021
Identifying priority areas for surface water protection in data scarce regions: an integrated spatial analysis for Zambia
The study develops an integrated framework to identify priority areas for surface water protection in data-scarce regions, using Zambia as a case study.
Publication, 2021
Impacts of loss of free-flowing rivers on global freshwater megafauna
The study examines how river fragmentation threatens freshwater megafauna and finds that 94 of 497 remaining free-flowing rivers longer than 500 km could lose that status if all proposed dams were built.
Publication, 2021
Navigating trade-offs between dams and river conservation
The paper quantifies the trade-offs between proposed hydropower dams and river conservation, and sets out a hierarchy of avoid, minimise, restore and mitigate responses.
Publication, 2021
- 2019
Mapping the world's free-flowing rivers
A global assessment of river connectivity and the pressures affecting long, free-flowing rivers.
Publication, May 8, 2019
Global assessment of antibiotics in river systems using a high-resolution contaminant fate model
This work develops a high-resolution contaminant fate model to estimate antibiotic emissions and their transport through river networks at global scale.
Publication, 2019
- 2018
Estimating the eco-toxicological risk of estrogens in China's rivers using a high-resolution contaminant fate model
The study applies a spatially explicit contaminant fate model to estimate the eco-toxicological risk of estrogens in China's rivers.
Publication, 2018
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