Delineation of Watershed and Estuarine Drainage Areas for Major Rivers Discharge into Coastal Waters in China

Abstract

With the support of Geographical Information System (GIS) technique, boundary of watershed and estuarine drainage areas for fifteen major rivers discharge into coastal waters in China was defined in this study so as to provide the basic geospatial data for further eco-regionalizing and classifying estuarine and coastal waters in China. Using the Hydrology module in ArcGIS environmental, sub-watersheds for fifteen rivers discharge into coastal waters in China were delineated, represented by different spatial levels with five thresholds’ values. Boundary of watershed for fifteen rivers discharge into coastal waters was further delimited, which was verified by the deviation error of delineated areas in this study with other literatures, all within 10%. Forty-one units of estuarine drainage areas were finally defined based on the data regarding spatial distribution of tidehead for fifteen rivers and sub-watersheds delineated before.