Hydrologic Sub-basins of Greenland, Version 1
Data set id:
NSIDC-0371
DOI: 10.5067/DT9T7DPD7HBI
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
initial release

Overview

The Hydrologic Sub-basins of Greenland data set contains Geographic Information System (GIS) polygon shapefiles that include 293 hydrologic sub-basins of the Greenland Ice Sheet, as created by Lewis and Smith (2009). Five km Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of ice-surface and bedrock topography (Bamber et al. 2001) were used to estimate the hydraulic potentiometric surface for Greenland, which accounts for the effects of ice overburden pressure, such as hydrostatic pressure, surface topography, and underlying bedrock topography (Paterson 1994). Using the 5 km potentiometric grid, a modeled basin network for Greenland's ice sheet was created using the hydrological tools within ESRI ArcGIS (ArcInfo 9.2). Although the GIS initially generated more than 293 basins, basins less than 100 km2 in size, as well as basins located completely outside of the ice sheet extent, were removed from the data set. Data are available via FTP, and can be read in any GIS software. The following journal article provides documentation for this data set: Lewis, Sarah and Laurence Smith. 2009. Hydrologic Drainage of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Hydrological Processes DOI: 10.1002/hyp.7343. This journal article can be accessed from the Documentation link at the top of this Web page.
Parameter(s):
DISCHARGE/FLOWDRAINAGEGLACIER TOPOGRAPHY/ICE SHEET TOPOGRAPHYRUNOFF
Platform(s):
MODELS
Sensor(s):
NOT APPLICABLE
Data Format(s):
Shapefile
Temporal Coverage:
1 January 1991 to 31 December 2000
Temporal Resolution:
Not Specified
Spatial Resolution:
  • Not Specified
Spatial Coverage:
N:
85.57962
S:
59.25085
E:
-6.7577
W:
-80.9178
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

A free NASA Earthdata Login account is required to access these data. Learn More

Documentation

Help Articles

How to Articles

Data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be accessed directly from our HTTPS file system. We provide basic command line Wget and curl instructions for HTTPS file system downloads below.