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 Total Water Storage
  6. Irrigation
  7. Dams
  8. Longest River
  9. Topography
  10. References

This report is for the watershed with an outlet near 38°41'27"N, 9°10'15"W, or (38.691, -9.171), with a drainage area of around 80,300 km².

Political Boundaries

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

Table 1. Countries in the watershed.

Country Area (km²) Percent of watershed
Spain 55,700 70%
Portugal 24,300 30%

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

Population

The watershed has an estimated population of 11,300,000 in the year 2020. Figure 1 shows how population has changed from 1990 to 2020. The population grew at an average rate of 0.8% 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 dense short vegetation, covering 35,200 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
Dense short vegetation 35,700 35,200 -1%
Tree cover 19,900 19,500 -2%
Cropland 12,700 12,000 -5%
Built-up 7,150 9,070 26%
Semi-arid 3,490 3,260 -6%
Open surface water 660 686 3%
Ocean 243 243 0%
Wetland + dense short vegetation 128 97 -24%

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 591 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 488 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).

Total 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 total water storage anomaly over the watershed.

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Figure 3. GRACE total 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 downwards at a rate of -1.5 cm per decade (P = 0.01). This P-value suggests that the observed trend is statistically significant; it is unlikely the trend is due to random chance.

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

Irrigation

The watershed had about 4649.4 km² of land equipped for irrigation in 2005. This is about 5.8% 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 138 dams identified in the Global Dam Watch database, with a total storage capacity of 14,000 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
39.450 -8.206
40.053 -3.273
40.346 -2.897
39.843 -4.406
39.867 -4.113
39.799 -5.175
39.799 -5.192
39.947 -4.837
40.302 -3.537
40.080 -7.790
40.111 -7.730
Alcantara 2 Tajo Hydroelectricity Built 1969 135.0 3162.0 39.732 -6.885
Buendia Buendia Guadiela Irrigation Built 1957 79.0 1638.7 40.399 -2.781
Valdecanas Valdecanas Tajo Irrigation Built 1964 98.0 1450.0 39.778 -5.609
Castelo do Bode Zezere Hydroelectricity Built 1951 115.0 1100.0 39.544 -8.318
Gabriel Y. Galan Alagon Irrigation Built 1961 73.0 924.2 40.223 -6.131
Entrepenas Tajo Irrigation Built 1956 87.0 802.6 40.493 -2.748
Cabril Zezere Hydroelectricity Built 1954 136.0 720.0 39.919 -8.131
El Atazar Lozoya Irrigation Built 1972 134.0 426.0 40.913 -3.475
Cedillo Tajo Hydroelectricity Built 1975 66.0 260.0 39.666 -7.538
El Burguillo Alberche Irrigation Built 1913 91.0 208.0 40.424 -4.537
Maranhao Seda Irrigation Built 1957 55.0 205.4 39.019 -7.976
Alcorlo Bornova Irrigation Built 1978 73.0 180.0 41.011 -3.024
Torrejon Tajo Tajo Hydroelectricity Built 1966 62.0 176.3 39.833 -5.985
Montargil Sor Irrigation Built 1958 48.0 164.3 39.056 -8.173
Irrigation Built 1955 78.0 148.3 40.374 -4.312
Finisterre Algodor Other Built 1977 34.0 133.0 39.649 -3.653
Valmayor Aulencia Water supply Built 1975 60.0 124.0 40.535 -4.049
Pracana Ocreza Hydroelectricity Built 1951 60.0 116.5 39.566 -7.810
Azutan Tajo Hydroelectricity Built 1969 55.0 113.0 39.776 -5.089
Fratel Tejo Hydroelectricity Built 1973 43.0 92.5 39.543 -7.801
Santillana Manzanares Water supply Built 1978 40.0 91.1 40.708 -3.818
Borbollon Arrago Irrigation Built 1954 35.0 85.0 40.128 -6.576
Rosarito Tietar Irrigation Built 1958 38.0 84.7 40.109 -5.322
Built 1986 80.7 39.970 -7.482
Idanha Ponsul Irrigation Built 1949 54.0 77.8 39.949 -7.197
La Tajera Tajuna Irrigation Built 1993 62.0 68.0 40.840 -2.618
Jerte Jerte Water supply Built 1985 43.0 58.5 40.062 -6.042
El Vado Jarama Water supply Built 1954 69.0 55.7 41.006 -3.298
Santa Luzia Unhais Hydroelectricity Built 1942 76.0 53.7 40.091 -7.859
Valdeobispo Alagon Irrigation Built 1965 57.0 53.0 40.100 -6.250
Belena Sorbe Water supply Built 1982 57.0 50.5 40.936 -3.198
Puentes Viejas Lozoya Water supply Built 1940 66.0 49.2 40.993 -3.574
Bouqa Zezere Hydroelectricity Built 1955 65.0 49.0 39.851 -8.218
Rivera de Gata Main Dam Gata Irrigation Built 1990 61.0 48.9 40.136 -6.632
Riosequillo Lozoya Water supply Built 1956 56.0 48.5 40.984 -3.649
El Pardo Manzanares Other Built 1970 35.0 45.0 40.540 -3.791
43.1 40.015 -4.706
Pedrezuela Guadalix Water supply Built 1967 53.0 41.2 40.757 -3.623
Castrejon Tajo Irrigation Built 1967 26.0 41.0 39.840 -4.290
Meimoa Meimoa Irrigation Built 1985 56.0 40.9 40.262 -7.142
39.0 39.890 -6.542
La Pinilla Lozoya Water supply Built 1967 33.0 37.5 40.945 -3.777
Arrocampo Arrocampo Hydroelectricity Built 1976 36.0 35.5 39.787 -5.730
Built 2000 35.3 41.077 -2.784
Navalcan Guadyerbas Irrigation Built 1977 26.0 33.9 40.047 -5.141
Palmaces Canamares Irrigation Built 1954 40.0 31.4 41.052 -2.939
Bolarque Tajo Irrigation Built 1910 46.0 30.7 40.363 -2.817
29.9 39.364 -6.304
Built 1991 29.7 40.283 -5.895
La Acena Acena Built 1989 23.7 40.615 -4.224
El Villar Lozoya Water supply Built 1882 50.0 22.5 40.950 -3.563
Torrejon Tietar Tietar Hydroelectricity Built 1967 30.0 22.0 39.840 -5.990
Guadiloba Guadiloba Water supply Built 1971 32.0 20.4 39.488 -6.296
Guajaraz Guajaraz Water supply Built 1971 47.0 18.1 39.797 -4.086
17.7 39.480 -7.997
Picadas Alberche Irrigation Built 1952 59.0 15.2 40.336 -4.251
Built 1989 13.9 39.265 -6.301
12.8 38.996 -8.688
Divor Divor Irrigation Built 1965 25.0 11.9 38.700 -7.926
Navacerrada Navacerrada Built 1968 11.0 40.715 -4.007
10.6 39.231 -6.280
8.8 39.506 -7.579
Built 1989 7.9 40.347 -5.775
7.7 40.274 -2.956
7.7 39.476 -7.552
7.4 39.285 -7.773
Built before 1985 7.3 39.504 -6.561
7.0 39.805 -3.753
Built 1985 7.0 39.100 -8.691
6.4 39.875 -7.075
6.3 39.220 -6.234
Built 1992 6.2 40.062 -5.607
6.1 38.843 -8.780
6.0 39.283 -7.811
5.7 39.673 -6.309
5.4 40.669 -4.120
Built 1992 5.3 39.350 -7.383
4.2 39.857 -4.451
3.7 39.093 -7.621
Built 1988 3.7 40.316 -4.520
3.3 38.920 -7.838
Built 1992 3.2 39.166 -7.736
3.2 40.551 -2.176
Built before 1985 2.9 39.157 -8.177
2.8 39.791 -7.330
2.7 39.016 -8.546
2.7 39.582 -5.791
2.5 40.311 -7.562
2.4 40.423 -4.503
2.3 39.517 -5.905
Built 1988 2.2 39.180 -7.964
2.1 40.518 -2.063
2.1 39.456 -5.699
2.0 39.347 -6.198
2.0 39.593 -6.676
2.0 40.046 -7.015
1.9 39.121 -8.351
1.9 40.028 -5.778
1.9 38.849 -7.748
1.9 38.752 -7.902
1.9 40.023 -7.557
1.8 39.393 -7.653
1.8 39.903 -7.112
Built 1989 1.7 39.075 -7.646
1.6 39.341 -7.607
1.5 40.142 -6.801
1.5 39.877 -5.746
1.5 39.361 -8.368
Built 1992 1.4 39.836 -6.266
1.4 39.914 -6.270
1.4 39.202 -6.235
Built 1992 1.4 40.120 -6.318
1.4 40.016 -7.042
1.4 39.928 -7.068
1.4 39.542 -5.753
1.4 39.097 -8.464
1.3 39.686 -6.867
1.3 40.142 -4.996
1.0 39.149 -8.423
Built before 1985 1.0 39.246 -8.586
1.0 39.195 -8.203
0.9 40.591 -4.051
0.9 39.806 -7.208
Built before 1985 0.8 40.216 -7.383
0.7 39.599 -5.901
0.5 40.607 -4.190
0.2 40.579 -4.162

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 1,150 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 1,405 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 0.0 m to 2356.8 m above sea level. The average, or mean, elevation is 592.5 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 1 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.