A global analysis of stream gauges reveals that they are predominantly installed on large, perennially flowing and human-impacted rivers. The current placement of stream gauges does not provide observations that represent the wide variety of global rivers, resulting in a biased dataset, which has broad implications for ecology, hydrology, and freshwater management.
References
Vörösmarty, C. et al. Global water data: a newly endangered species. Eos 82, 54–58 (2001). A commentary that discusses the value of high-quality and long-term hydrological datasets.
Deweber, J. T. et al. Importance of understanding landscape biases in USGS gage locations: implications and solutions for managers. Fisheries 39, 155–163 (2014). This paper reports biases in the landscape representation of the US Geological Survey stream gauge network.
Dobrushin, R. L. Prescribing a system of random variables by conditional distributions. Theory Probab. Appl. 15, 458–486 (1970). This paper describes the Wasserstein distance, a statistical approach to comparing two probability distributions.
Ruhi, A., Messager, M. L. & Olden, J. D. Tracking the pulse of the Earth’s fresh waters. Nat. Sustain. 1, 198–203 (2018). This paper reports a decline in hydrological monitoring and proposes solutions for sustainable water management in the future.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This is a summary of: Krabbenhoft, C. A. et al. Assessing placement bias of the global river gauge network. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00873-0 (2022).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Identifying biases in the global placement of river gauges. Nat Sustain 5, 561–562 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00878-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00878-9
- Springer Nature Limited