Abstract
Abstract. Despite large-scale infrastructure development, deforestation, mining and petroleum exploration in the Amazon Basin, relatively little attention has been paid to the management scale required for the protection of wetlands, fisheries and other aspects of aquatic ecosystems. This is due, in part, to the enormous size, multinational composition and interconnected nature of the Amazon River system, as well as to the absence of an adequate spatial model for integrating data across the entire Amazon Basin. In this data article we present a spatially uniform multi-scale GIS framework that was developed especially for the analysis, management and monitoring of various aspects of aquatic systems in the Amazon Basin. The Amazon GIS-Based River Basin Framework is accessible as an ESRI geodatabase at doi:10.5063/F1BG2KX8.
Highlights
1.1 Amazon Basin systemThe Amazon is the largest river basin in the world
The near-global Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation data set (Farr et al, 2007) was developed by NASA and the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for the entire Earth using stereo C-band imagery acquired by the space shuttle Endeavour in February of 2000, which corresponds to the early rising water period in the central Amazon region, when the Amazon main stem begins its 10– 12 m annual flood cycle
Seven different scales or hierarchical levels were delineated in our basin hierarchy, denominated basin level 1 (BL1) to basin level 7 (BL7) (Figs. 1 and 2)
Summary
The Amazon is the largest river basin in the world. Its strict hydrographical area covers 6.3 million km (Milliman and Farnsworth, 2011), and when the Tocantins Basin and estuarine coastal areas are included to define the Amazon region, the total area is 7.287 million km. Wetlands occupy 14 % of the Amazon Basin (Melack and Hess, 2010) and play an important role in the ecology and biogeochemistry of this immense fluvial ecosystem. These environments include most of the 35 inland or coastal wetland types defined by the Ramsar Convention (Mathews, 2013) but are composed primarily of alluvial floodplain habitats. The spatial and temporal variability in the river flood pulse and its influence on inundation patterns in floodplain environments play a fundamental role in sustaining the diversity and productivity of floodplain biota and the livelihoods of human populations throughout the Amazon. The conservation and management of the natural resources and services provided by this ecosystem will require a uniform hydrological framework, covering the entire Amazon region, adapted for this objective
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