Watershed Data Report

This report was created with the free Global Watersheds web app on . Creative Commons License BY 4.0.

Contents

  1. Political Boundaries
  2. Population
  3. Land Cover
  4. Hydrology
  5. GRACE Terrestrial Water Storage
  6. Irrigation
  7. Dams
  8. Longest River
  9. Topography
  10. References

This report is for the watershed with an outlet near 0°26'13"S, 50°44'16"W, or (-0.437, -50.738), with a drainage area of around 5,900,000 km².

Political Boundaries

The watershed is located in nine countries, as shown below in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Countries in the watershed.

Country Area (km²) Percent of watershed
Brazil 3,690,000 63%
Peru 961,000 16%
Bolivia 715,000 12%
Colombia 340,000 6%
Ecuador 130,000 2%
Venezuela 53,600 1%
Guyana 12,800 0%
Suriname 294 0%
France 116 0%

Data on political boundaries comes from Natural Earth, https://www.naturalearthdata.com.

Population

The watershed has an estimated population of 33,600,000 in the year 2020. Figure 1 shows how population has changed from 1990 to 2020. The population grew at an average rate of 1.6% per year over this time period.

Figure 1. Estimated watershed population from 1990 to 2020.

Population data comes from GlobPop, Global Gridded Population Estimates, created by researchers at Beijing Normal University (Liu 2024).

Human population growth can affect water quality via increased pollution from households, industry, and agriculture. Further, land use and land cover change associated with population growth can have a major impact on watersheds (see the next section of this report).

Land Cover

The most common land cover type in the watershed is tree cover, covering 4,270,000 km² in 2020. More detailed information about land cover and how it has changed is shown in Table 3 and Figure 2 below. Pairs of bars represent the area for each land cover type in the years 2000 and 2020.

Figure 2. Land cover in the watershed.

Table 3. Land cover in the watershed.

Land Cover Type Area in 2000, km² Area in 2020, km²   Change
Tree cover 4,450,000 4,270,000 -3%
Dense short vegetation 517,000 608,000 17%
Wetland + tree cover 571,000 563,000 -1%
Wetland + dense short vegetation 175,000 173,000 0%
Open surface water 114,000 121,000 6%
Cropland 47,900 108,000 125%
Semi-arid 51,400 51,200 0%
Built-up 12,100 39,300 225%

Land cover data comes from the GLAD: Global Land Cover and Land Use Change, 2000-2020 (Popatov et al. 2022). This dataset, created by researchers at the University of Maryland, is available online here. Classification is based on satellite imagery from Landsat and machine learning tools.

Land cover change can profoundly influence watershed hydrology and water quality. Urbanization and development can increase the impervious cover, causing more water to run off rather than infiltrate into the ground. This can decrease groundwater recharge and river baseflows, or the flows that occur during dry times. Deforestation and agricultural development are often accompanied by an increase in soil erosion and sediment loads. Other land use types are associated with water pollution. For example, agriculture can increase loads of pesticides and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from fertilizers. Urbanization and industrialization can cause contamination from a wide range of chemicals used in households and industry.

Hydrology

The average annual precipitation over the watershed is 2,157 mm/year. (Precipitation includes all forms of water, including snow and rain.) Some of this water leaves the watershed surface via evaporation and transpiration, or the loss of water from plants. Annual evapotranspiration is estimated at 1,414 mm/year. The basin climatology, or the monthly average precipitation and evapotranspiration, is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Watershed climatology: monthly average precipitation and evapotranspiration over the watershed.

Precipitation data comes from WorldClim, a global gridded dataset by researchers at the University of East Anglia (Harris et al. 2020). This dataset is based on downscaling and bias-correcting the CRU-TS dataset (Fick and Hijmans 2017), which is based on a large collection of station observations that span 1901–2018.

Evapotranspiration is even more difficult to estimate than precipitation. Here, we use a dataset, GLEAM v3.6B, which combines modeling and remote sensing data (Martens et al. 2017; Miralles et al. 2011).

It is difficult to estimate water cycle variables over large areas. So you should keep in mind that these estimates are uncertain (not perfect).

Terrestrial Water Storage Anomaly

The GRACE satellites provide information about changes in the amount of water over different locations on the Earth. Figure 3 shows the average terrestrial water storage anomaly over the watershed.

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Figure 3. GRACE terrestrial water storage anomaly from 2002 to 2025.

The GRACE satellites make highly accurate measurements of the Earth's gravitational field, and provide measurements of changes in the mass of water on a monthly time scale. These measurements do not tell us how much water there is in a region, but rather, how it the amount of water has changed compared to a baseline. The measurement includes all forms of water, including water in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, soil moisture, groundwater, glaciers, snow, and ice. For an introduction to GRACE, see the section of my PhD thesis on Remote Sensing of the Water Cycle.

The total amount of water in the watershed appears to be trending upwards at a rate of 0.7 cm per decade (P = 0.61). This P-value indicates that the observed trend is not statistically significant. In other words, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is a meaningful trend in the data.

GRACE Terrestrial Water Storage Anomaly data is from the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas, Austin (Save et al. 2016, 2022).

Irrigation

The watershed had about 7167.4 km² of land equipped for irrigation in 2005. This is about 0.1% of the watershed. Figure 5 shows the development of irrigated area from 1900 to 2005. These estimates are based on a global dataset published by an international team of researchers (Siebert et al. 2015).

Figure 5. Area equipped for irrigation in the watershed from 1900 to 2005

Irrigation brings many benefits for growing crops. In arid regions, it enables production where it would be otherwise impossible. In humid regions, irrigation can increase crop quality and yield, and provide more certainty against unpredictable climate. Yet, the expansion of irrigation can have impacts on watersheds that need to be carefully managed.

Increased irrigation usually requires more water to be withdrawn from rivers, lakes, or groundwater sources, which can reduce streamflow and alter natural flow patterns. This reduced flow can harm aquatic ecosystems and diminish the water available downstream for other uses. Irrigation often introduces fertilizers and pesticides into the watershed, and may increase soil erosion and sediment transport. When nutrients run off into rivers and streams, they can lead to nutrient pollution, algal blooms, and eutrophication. This plus chemical pesticides and herbicides negatively impacts aquatic life and water quality for human uses.

Dams

This watershed contains 163 dams identified in the Global Dam Watch database, with a total storage capacity of 41,000 million m³.

Information on these dams is listed in Table 4. The number and size of dams in a watershed is one measure of hydromodification, or how much the natural hydrologic cycle is influenced by human activities.

Table 4. Dams in the watershed. Unknown or missing data shown with a dash.

Dam Name Reservoir Name River Main Use Year Dam Height (m) Capacity (10⁶ m³) Latitude Longitude URL
Cidezal Juruena Hydroelectricity -13.370 -59.013
-2.749 -78.414
-7.260 -59.632
-10.582 -65.491
Dardanelos Hydroelectricity -10.165 -59.448
Santa Cruz de Monte Negro Jamari Hydroelectricity -10.230 -63.233
Cachoeira Santo Antônio Curuquetê Hydroelectricity -8.598 -65.552
-12.465 -74.787
-9.577 -76.745
-13.544 -59.030
-13.024 -58.187
Salto Corgão Guapore Hydroelectricity -14.448 -59.485
Primavera Hydroelectricity -11.904 -61.235
Marcol JiParaná Hydroelectricity -12.851 -60.323
Incomex Hydroelectricity -11.910 -62.180
Esperança Guapore Hydroelectricity -13.778 -59.770
-12.484 -74.745
San Gabán I San Gabán Hydroelectricity -13.720 -70.453
San Gabán IV Corani Macusani Hydroelectricity -13.786 -70.472
Balbina Balbina Reservoir Uatuma Hydroelectricity Built 1987 33.0 17533.0 -1.914 -59.477
Belo Monte Calha Do Xingu Reservoir Xingu Hydroelectricity Built 2019 36.0 4518.0 -3.434 -51.947 link
Samuel Jamari Built 1989 38.0 3493.0 -8.740 -63.468
Sinop Teles Pires Hydroelectricity Built 2019 76.0 3070.0 -11.274 -55.452 link
Jirau Madeira Hydroelectricity Built 2015 62.0 2746.7 -9.267 -64.648 link
Colider Teles Pires Hydroelectricity Built 2019 40.0 1520.0 -10.984 -55.763 link
Teles Pires Teles Pires Hydroelectricity Built 2016 80.0 997.0 -9.353 -56.777 link
Built 1985 899.0 -0.865 -59.606
Sao Manoel Teles Pires Hydroelectricity Built 2017 577.0 -9.190 -57.051 link
Upamayo Junin Lago Junin Built 1936 10.0 556.0 -10.979 -76.196 link
Rondon II Repressa da Rondon II Comemoracao Hydroelectricity Built 2010 11.0 478.3 -11.998 -60.697 link
Curua Una Curua Una Built 1977 472.0 -2.817 -54.300
Mazar Paute Hydroelectricity Built 2011 166.0 410.0 -2.599 -78.624 link
Chaglla Huallaga Hydroelectricity Built 2016 202.0 375.0 -9.695 -75.836 link
Misicuni Misicuni River Hydroelectricity Built 2017 120.0 185.5 -17.099 -66.327 link
Built 2007 181.3 -13.852 -53.256
Built 2006 175.6 -12.794 -56.006
Choclococha Pampas Built 1960 12.0 170.0 -13.243 -75.073
Built 2003 155.6 -9.630 -54.973
Corani Corani Built 1965 150.0 -17.229 -65.892
Santo Antonio do Jari Jari Hydroelectricity Built 2014 14.0 133.4 -0.642 -52.522 link
Santo Antonio Madeira Hydroelectricity Built 2016 60.0 130.4 -8.802 -63.952 link
Built before 1985 121.0 -13.352 -75.086
Daniel Palacios Paute Hydroelectricity Built 1982 120.0 -2.592 -78.566 link
Sibinacocha Lake Sibinacocha Sibinacocha Hydroelectricity Built 1996 12.0 110.0 -13.901 -71.006 link
Built 1994 108.4 -11.312 -59.229
La Angostura Lago del Eden Sulti Built 1945 22.0 100.0 -17.529 -66.086
Built 1998 95.4 -9.777 -54.990
Figueira JiParaná Hydroelectricity Built 2005 95.3 -11.996 -62.172
75.9 -11.405 -76.332
Built 2002 64.6 -15.123 -58.960
Built 2010 64.4 -12.533 -57.877
Built 2010 64.0 -13.224 -59.028
Antacoto Antacoto Santa Eulalia Built 1966 61.2 -11.408 -76.362
Built before 1985 58.7 -0.541 -78.225
Built before 1985 54.1 -11.959 -75.912
Built 2007 50.8 -9.684 -54.963
Built 2010 47.9 -13.266 -59.020
Built 2016 47.4 -0.199 -77.686
44.5 -11.719 -76.122
Pias I Hydroelectricity 39.2 -7.890 -77.567
Built 1996 38.8 -9.719 -65.157
Built 2011 36.4 -12.903 -58.914
Built 1993 30.8 -12.800 -52.562
30.5 -0.740 -60.081
Built 1999 28.4 -8.348 -51.452
Built 2011 28.4 -17.348 -60.284
Built 2010 28.0 -13.199 -58.985
26.7 -11.777 -76.093
Built 2016 26.5 -12.290 -74.685
Built 2010 25.2 -13.075 -58.976
22.8 2.893 -60.989
Built 2003 18.8 -12.194 -55.594
Built 1994 18.8 0.923 -59.331
Built 2001 17.4 -12.990 -55.861
Built 2004 16.8 -0.233 -78.158
Built 2000 13.8 -11.879 -56.297
Built 2009 13.5 -9.311 -51.420
Built 1995 12.5 -10.121 -53.674
Built 2016 12.0 0.112 -77.962
Built 1990 10.6 -11.102 -54.556
Built 2003 10.3 -17.942 -64.572
10.3 -17.274 -63.276
Built 1995 9.2 -0.781 -60.017
Built 1999 9.0 -10.568 -59.208
8.6 1.462 -75.480
Built before 1985 8.2 3.216 -61.090
Built before 1985 7.1 -11.478 -76.272
Built 1989 7.0 -13.526 -52.449
Built 2015 6.8 -13.356 -57.615
Built 1992 6.8 -13.144 -52.572
Built 1993 6.7 -10.286 -55.750
Built 1988 4.8 -7.107 -55.392
4.6 -10.219 -52.433
4.6 -2.077 -78.204
Built 1989 4.5 -10.394 -56.577
Built 1987 4.4 -11.679 -61.825
Built 1999 4.2 -10.646 -68.101
4.2 -14.318 -55.793
Built 2006 4.1 -1.193 -78.827
Built 1989 4.0 -10.378 -58.508
4.0 -0.379 -78.158
3.9 -11.947 -51.881
Built 1999 3.8 -11.497 -56.978
Built 2016 3.5 -19.322 -64.491
Built 1998 3.3 -10.472 -67.665
3.2 -11.893 -51.914
3.0 -7.502 -72.614
Built 1999 2.9 -11.758 -56.809
Built 1997 2.8 -15.787 -61.684
Built 1988 2.7 -10.419 -55.749
2.5 -10.589 -53.864
Built 1990 2.5 -7.335 -73.079
Built 1994 2.4 -10.449 -53.794
2.4 -11.168 -56.810
Built 1998 2.3 -10.639 -65.103
Built 2006 2.1 -12.309 -55.446
Built 2000 2.0 -10.333 -58.500
2.0 -10.139 -67.679
1.9 -10.682 -68.200
Built 2012 1.9 -1.209 -78.809
Built 1988 1.8 -10.350 -55.717
1.8 -7.173 -78.277
Built 1995 1.7 -11.094 -57.096
Built 1986 1.6 -10.041 -67.594
1.6 -10.470 -55.643
1.6 -1.398 -78.383
1.5 -10.699 -68.206
1.5 2.912 -60.325
Built 1987 1.5 -10.331 -58.536
Built 2000 1.4 -11.165 -68.570
Built 1995 1.0 -10.403 -58.510
Built 1995 0.9 -9.453 -64.608
Built 2001 0.9 -7.721 -72.791
0.8 -7.744 -72.704
Built 1998 0.7 -10.735 -68.415
Built 1991 0.4 -10.660 -68.259
0.4 -11.077 -68.569
0.3 -10.350 -58.501
0.3 -7.080 -55.412
Built 1987 0.3 -7.264 -73.082
Built before 1985 0.3 -7.699 -72.777
Built 2000 0.3 -9.468 -62.430
Built 1988 0.3 -10.148 -53.703
0.2 -7.719 -72.708
Built 1997 0.2 -7.700 -72.825
0.2 -7.692 -72.891
Built 1999 0.2 -7.749 -72.686
0.2 -7.679 -72.771
Built 2000 0.2 -7.225 -73.101
0.2 -10.682 -68.229
Built 2003 0.1 -7.309 -73.065
Built 2000 0.1 -7.089 -55.411
Built 1989 0.1 -7.724 -72.675
0.1 -9.383 -62.553
Built 1988 0.1 -7.332 -73.065
0.1 -7.694 -72.813
0.1 -7.727 -72.675
Built 1989 0.1 -7.740 -72.692
0.1 -10.340 -58.468
0.1 -10.311 -58.529
Built 1999 0.1 -10.304 -58.560
0.1 -7.700 -72.699
Built 1988 0.1 -12.577 -60.965

Dams serve many useful purposes including electric generation, water supply, irrigation, flood control, and recreation. However, if not carefully planned and managed, dams can have a heavy environmental impact. Today, many governments are removing dams to bring rivers back to life.

For a detailed look at the impact of dams on people and the environment, I encourage you to read the book Silenced Rivers by Patrick McCully. To help conserve free-flowing rivers, consider supporting the nonprofit International Rivers.

Data on dams comes from the Global Dam Watch database, published in July 2024. For more details, see the journal article by lead researchers at McGill University (Lehner et al. 2024).

Longest River

The longest river is the watershed is 6,570 km long. It is shown highlighted in the map in Figure 5 below.

This is the longest continuous flowline in the source dataset, MERIT-Basins. It is not necessarily the mainstem of the river, or the one with the same name. When it comes to naming rivers, historical, legal, and cultural influences are also important.

Figure 5. The longest river that flows to the watershed outlet (highlighted).

Figure 6 shows the elevation profile of the longest river reach. Elevations on the plot are in meters above mean sea level. The river begins at 4,180 m, and the outlet is at 0 m.

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Figure 6. Elevation profile of the longest river reach.

Elevation data for the profile plot is from MERIT-DEM (Yamazaki et al. 2017). Actual distances on the plot may be underestimated somewhat. This is because river paths are based on a grid or raster data, which simplifies the meandering path of real-world rivers.

Topography

Terrain elevations in the watershed range from 0.3 m to 5143.1 m above sea level. The average, or mean, elevation is 435.0 m. Figure 7 shows a distribution of terrain elevations in the watershed.

Figure 7. Distribution of terrain elevations in the watershed.
Scale for x-axis: Linear   Log

Elevation data is provided by EarthEnv (Amatulli et al. 2021), and is based on the Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010 dataset (GMTED2010). Statistics are based on gridded elevation data with pixels that are about 10 km on a side. Because of the size of the pixels, some smoothing takes place, and so the statistics reported above may not capture the true minimum and maximum elevation.

References

Amatulli, G., Domisch, S., Tuanmu, M.-N., Parmentier, B., Ranipeta, A., Malczyk, J., & Jetz, W. (2018). A suite of global, cross-scale topographic variables for environmental and biodiversity modeling. Scientific Data, 5(1), 180040. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.40

Fick, S.E., and R.J. Hijmans. 2017. “WorldClim 2: New 1‐km Spatial Resolution Climate Surfaces for Global Land Areas.” International Journal of Climatology 37 (12): 4302–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086

Harris, I., Osborn, T.J., Jones, P. et al. Version 4 of the CRU TS monthly high-resolution gridded multivariate climate dataset. Scientific Data 7, 109 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0453-3

Lehner, B., Beames, P., Mulligan, M. et al. The Global Dam Watch database of river barrier and reservoir information for large-scale applications. Scientific Data 11, 1069 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03752-9

Liu, L., X. Cao, S. Li, and N. Jie. “A 31-Year (1990–2020) Global Gridded Population Dataset Generated by Cluster Analysis and Statistical Learning.” Scientific Data 11, no. 1 (January 24, 2024): 124. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-02913-0

Martens, B., Miralles, D.G., Lievens, H., van der Schalie, R., de Jeu, R.A.M., Fernández-Prieto, D., Beck, H.E., Dorigo, W.A., and Verhoest, N.E.C. 2017. GLEAM v3: satellite-based land evaporation and root-zone soil moisture, Geoscientific Model Development, 10, 1903–1925. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-1903-2017

Miralles, D.G., Holmes, T.R.H., de Jeu, R.A.M., Gash, J.H., Meesters, A.G.C.A., Dolman, A.J. 2011. Global land-surface evaporation estimated from satellite-based observations, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 15, 453–469. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-15-453-2011

Potapov P., Hansen M.C., Pickens A., Hernandez-Serna A., Tyukavina A., Turubanova S., Zalles V., Li X., Khan A., Stolle F., Harris N., Song X.-P., Baggett A., Kommareddy I., Kommareddy A. (2022) The global 2000-2020 land cover and land use change dataset derived from the Landsat archive: first results. Frontiers in Remote Sensing. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsen.2022.856903

Save, H., S. Bettadpur, and B.D. Tapley (2016), High resolution CSR GRACE RL05 mascons, Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth, 121. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JB013007

Save, H., 2020, "CSR GRACE and GRACE-FO RL06 Mascon Solutions v02." https://doi.org/10.15781/cgq9-nh24

Siebert, S., M. Kummu, M. Porkka, P. Döll, N. Ramankutty, and B. R. Scanlon. “A Global Data Set of the Extent of Irrigated Land from 1900 to 2005.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 19, no. 3 (March 25, 2015): 1521–45. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-1521-2015.

Yamazaki, D., D. Ikeshima, R. Tawatari, T. Yamaguchi, F. O’Loughlin, J.C. Neal, C.C. Sampson, S. Kanae, & P.D. Bates. (2017). A high‐accuracy map of global terrain elevations. Geophysical Research Letters, 44, 5844–5853. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL072874.