Impact of Global Warming on Large Rivers Sinuosity

WARISIN

This project investigates how global warming influences the morphology of large rivers worldwide by analyzing long-term satellite imagery to detect changes in river sinuosity and riparian vegetation. It aims to quantify how these geomorphic changes affect floodplain connectivity, sediment dynamics, and carbon storage, thereby improving the understanding of climate-river interactions at the global scale

Main Questions

Which remote sensing metrics can reliably detect long-term changes in river sinuosity and riparian vegetation using freely available satellite imagery?

Does global warming influence river sinuosity at spatial and temporal scales observable through multi-decadal satellite data?

Are the changes currently observed in Arctic rivers representative of broader processes occurring in rivers across different climatic zones?

Our Work and Outputs

GLORIN

GLORIN (Global LOng and Large Rivers INventory) is a global vector-based river network that maps all rivers longer than 400 km, distinguishing Long Rivers (LOR) and Large Rivers (LAR, >400 km length and >150 m mean wetted width). It provides river length, mean wetted width, and longitudinal slope derived from Copernicus GLO-30 DEM and orthogonal cross-sections every 50 km, validated against SWORD, GRIT, OSM, and satellite basemaps, and distributed as ESRI Shapefiles for six continental regions in both regional and equal-area projections.

You can access this dataset using the link below.