Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P STYLE="text-align:Justify;"><SPAN>This dataset shows the global distribution of over 1,300 estuaries, including some lagoon systems and fjords. The majority of estuaries are represented by polygons, except for 44 records for which points are available. This dataset was developed as part of the Sea Around Us</SPAN><SPAN> </SPAN><SPAN>(www.seaaroundus.org).</SPAN></P><P STYLE="text-align:Justify;"><SPAN>Creation Methodology: Water bodies were selected so as to include the estuaries of all the world’s major rivers, as well as the small estuaries of countries without major rivers. As such, no specific minimum size/discharge was applied to determine inclusion of estuaries in the dataset. The information has been gathered from a large number of sources, including reports, journals and electronic resources. Overall, the database accounts for over 80% of the world's freshwater discharge, and contains information about the name, location, surface area (in km2) and mean freshwater input (in m3.s-1) (cubic metres per second), calculated over a specified number of years. In 2014, the Seas Around Us (University of British Columbia), provided UNEP-WCMC with two spatial datasets: (1) a polygon dataset with no attribute information (apart from ID_NUMBER), and (2) a point dataset with detailed attribute and source information. Using the matching estuary ID numbers, UNEP-WCMC populated the polygon dataset's attribute table (“UBC-003-SAU-Estuaries2003-Polygons.shp”) with the relevant information from the point dataset. Where an estuary did not have a corresponding polygon, the information has been retained as point data (“UBC-003- SAU-Estuaries2003-Points-woCorrespondingPolygon.shp”): this dataset (and the original point dataset “UBC-003-SAU-Estuaries2003-AllPoints.shp”) are not distributed.</SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
Service Item Id: 2720ce7d854047e380e5bf2f3f31f772
Copyright Text: University of British Columbia, UNEP-WCMC