HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, and HydroLAKES provide digital vector maps delineating sub-basin boundaries, river network lines, and lake polygons. These products provide information on only the spatial location, geometry, and up- and down-stream topology of its respective hydrographic features.
In contrast, HydroATLAS is a value-added database containing additional hydro-environmental characteristics for the hydrographic features of sub-basins, rivers, and lakes. That is, each component of HydroATLAS (BasinATLAS, RiverATLAS, and LakeATLAS) offers a suite of over 50 hydro-environmental variables for the same hydrographic features that are contained in HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, and HydroLAKES, respectively.
Users who only require geometric information may thus prefer to use HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, or HydroLAKES due to the significantly smaller file sizes of these products. Users without file size limitations may prefer to use the HydroATLAS line of products which fully contains the HydroBASINS, HydroRIVERS, and HydroLAKES information.
Read more about the hydro-environmental variables contained in HydroATLAS on the product page.
