Freshwater is one of the most critical elements for sustainable development of ecosystems and societies. River basins, concomitant with administrative zones, form a common unit for freshwater management. So far, no comprehensive, global analysis exists that would link the ecological challenges of the planet's river basins to the capacity of the societies to cope with them. We address this gap by performing a geospatial resilience analysis for a global set of 541 river basins. We use the social‐ecological systems (SES) approach by relating three ecological vulnerability factors (human footprint, natural hazards, water scarcity) with three adaptive capacity factors (governance, economy, human development), based on temporal trajectories from 1990 to 2015. Additionally, we examine resilience by subtracting ecological vulnerability from adaptive capacity. The most striking result is the fundamentally different patterns of controlling factors of the resilience in different developing regions, particularly those of Africa and Asia. Their root causes are particularly low adaptive capacity in Africa, and high ecological vulnerability in Asia. Alarmingly, the difference between those continents grew within the study period. Finally, this study highlights the rapid dynamics of adaptive capacity in comparison to ecological vulnerability, the latter having more inertia. Their fragile balance is of our interest; they can either support or counteract each other depending on the geographic location.
Adaptive capacity 1990-2015
A global data set of adaptive capacity, an equal weight composite index for the social part of the social-ecological systems; both the reactive and proactive facets.
The index is a composite of governance, economy, and HDI (human development index). All these data are provided in this same folder.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015.
adaptive_capacity.nc
Ecological vulnerability 1990-2015
A global data set of ecological vulnerability, an equal weight composite index for the status of ecological systems.
It is calculated from Human Footprint, Natural hazards index and Water scarcity. All these data are provided in this same data package
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015.
ecological_vulnerability.nc
Economy 1990-2015
The global data set of economy in based on Gross Domestic Production (GDP) per capita PPP (purchasing power parity, PPP in USD) data on a subnational resolution.
The missing years in the subnational data were filled by temporal interpolation using national data. For calculations of Adaptive Capacity, the GDP values were log transformed to allow scale independence of the indiactor. See detailed method description from the article.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015, and scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on http://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.4
economy.nc
Governance 1990-2015
This variable indicates the quality of governancem, and is based on "Government Effectiveness" national level data set by World Bank. According to World Bank, this ind
Governance data set contains annual data from 1990 to 2015. The index is country-spesific and thus not gridded.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015, and scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/
governance.nc
Human development index (HDI) 1990-2015
Human Development Index (HDI, from Kummu et al., 2018) is a composite index for describing the level of human development. It is based on life expectancy, education, and per capita income.
This data set provides annual HDI for years 1990-2015 with 5 arc-min resolution, scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on http://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.4
HDI.nc
Natural hazards 1990-2015
Natural hazard index contains extreme events which strongly contribute to the interplay of Sosial-Ecological Systems (SES). The natural Hazard data combines cyclones, drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides. As no reliable time series exists at grid scale, we use a long term average.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015, and scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on: Based on Dilley et al. (2005)
natural_hazards.nc
Water scarcity 1990-2015
Water scarcity is an indicator for sustainability of water resources for both humans and nature. As a composite of freshwater freshwater resources and anthropogenic water use, it represents the hydrological compexity of an area.
Water stress is a combination of water stress and water shortage, see Equation 1 in the article.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015, and scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on http://doi.org/10.1038/srep38495 and http://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-175-2016
water_scarcity.nc
Resilience 1990-2015
In this study, resilience indicates "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks" (Adger et al., 2011).
It indicates the relationship between Adaptive Capacity and Ecological Vulnerability in this data package. The higher the ecological vulnerability, the more adaptive capacity is needed to ensure resilience.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015. The data is scaled from -1 to 1, and zero indicates resilience of global mid-range.
resilience.nc
Basin-scale resilience for 1990 and 2015
In this study, resilience indicates "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks" (Adger et al., 2011).
It indicates the relationship between Adaptive Capacity and Ecological Vulnerability in this data package. The higher the ecological vulnerability, the more adaptive capacity is needed to ensure resilience.
Global basin-scale data in vector format for years 1990 and 2015. The data is scaled from -1 to 1, and zero indicates resilience of global mid-range.
resilience_basin_data_1990_and_2015.gpkg
Human footprint 1990-2015
Human footprint aggregates the extent of built environments, crop land, pasture land, human population density, night-time lights, railways, roads, and navigable waterways. It is included into Ecological Vulnerability in this same data package.
Global gridded data set with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-min, annual data from 1990 to 2015, and scaled from 0 to 1.
Based on http://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.4
human_footprint.nc
