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GIS Resources

Spatial and Numeric Data Services guide to GIS data available at the University of Calgary.

Water Data

Calgary

  • Hydrology shapefiles download from Calgary Open Data portal

Alberta

Canada

  • Water Survey of Canada - hydrometric data: discharge (flow), water level, sediment load, by station, real-time and historic
  • DMTI 2020 Water Lines & Waterbodies download from SANDS file server

United States

North America

International

  • Global Watersheds
    • If you want to download geodata of your watershed or flowpath, first check the "Make downloadable" box under options, then create a new watershed. Any new watershed you make while the box is checked will be saved on the server and ready for download.

      Three download formats are available:

      • Shapefile, for use with any GIS software. Note that this is really a set of five files in a .zip archive. To use these files, you usually have to unzip the files into a folder on your computer.
      • KML, for display in Google Earth, Google Maps, or imported into a variety of mapping software.
      • GeoJSON, a plain text format that can be used in many applications -- especially popular with developers.
  • HydroSHEDS
    • HydroSHEDS is a mapping product that provides hydrographic information for regional and global-scale applications in a consistent format. It offers a suite of geo-referenced data sets (vector & raster) at various scales, including river networks, watershed boundaries, drainage directions, and flow accumulations. HydroSHEDS is based on high-resolution elevation data obtained during a Space Shuttle flight for NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).
  • HydroWASTE
    • HydroWASTE is a spatially-explicit global database of 58,502 WWTPs and their characteristics. This database was developed by combining national and regional datasets with auxiliary information to derive or complete missing WWTP characteristics, including the amount of people served. A high-resolution river network with streamflow estimates (HydroATLAS: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.9890531) was used to georeference WWTP outfall locations and calculate each plant’s dilution factor (i.e., the ratio of the natural discharge of the receiving waterbody to the WWTP effluent discharge).
  • Global Dam Tracker - A database of more than 35,000 dams with location, catchment, and attribute information