European catchments and Rivers network system (Ecrins), natural sub basins of Europe - version 0, Dec. 2011

The natural sub basins of Europe is a feature dataset which subdivides natural basins bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres into sub catchments of a surface between 10,000 square Kilometres and 40,000 square Kilometres. Sub basins are defined using the catchment area of big tributaries as much as possible, and subdividing the main course of the river into upper, medium, and lower parts of the basin. The target is having a spatially homogeneous, but still with hydrological meaning units. These subdivisions are nested when river basins are big and tributaries drain a surface bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres, which in the case of Danube and Volga makes up to 3 levels of sub basins.

Date (Creation): 2011-12-31

Edition: 00

Citation identifier: eea_v_3035_250_k_ecrins-sub-basins_p_1990-2006_v00_r00

Citation identifier: DAT-120-en

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Website	Role
European Environment Agency		sdi@eea.europa.eu	http://www.eea.europa.eu	Point of contact
European Environment Agency		sdi@eea.europa.eu		Custodian

Maintenance and update frequency: Irregular

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Hydrography

Keywords

GEMET

hydrography

EEA Management Plan

2012 1.4.1

EEA topics

Water

Use limitation: EEA standard re-use policy: unless otherwise indicated, re-use of content on the EEA website for commercial or non-commercial purposes is permitted free of charge, provided that the source is acknowledged ( http://www.eea.europa.eu/legal/copyright). Copyright holder: European Environment Agency (EEA).

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: no limitations to public access

Spatial representation type: Vector

Denominator: 250000

Language of dataset: English

Character set: UTF8

Topic category

Inland waters

Begin date: 1990-01-01

End date: 2006-12-31

Coordinate reference system identifier: EPSG:3035

Distribution format

SHP ( )

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
EEA:FILEPATH	https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/webdav/datastore/public/eea_v_3035_250_k_ecrins-sub-basins_p_1990-2006_v00_r00/
WWW:URL	https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/data/48545018-0505-494c-9ee1-d9ae792d4cf8	Direct download

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Statement: The natural sub basins layer is derived from ECRINS FECs. The process for creating them consists of a semi-automated procedure by which first FECs belonging to basins bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres are selected. Inside that basin, tributaries to the main river with a drainage surface bigger than 10,000 square Kilometres are taken as separate sub basins. If the area of an individual sub basin is bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres, then it is further subdivided as a normal basin. This loop continues until there is no tributary left with a surface bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres.

In big river basins, nested subdivisions occur when the resulting sub basin divided using main tributaries happen to be bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres. The main course of the river after removing tributaries can still have a surface bigger than 40,000 square Kilometres. In such case, it is further subdivided by manually selecting the last FEC downstream of the upper sub basin. The selection is made taking into consideration the shape of the basin, the proximity of other subdivision because of big tributaries, the presence of tributaries below the 10,000 square Kilometres threshold, and the surface upstream not being subdivided yet to be bigger than 10,000 and smaller than 40,000 square Kilometres.

This classification is done editing FECs’ attribute SB. After that they are dissolved with multipart option, and using the field SB, into the sub basins.