Identification

Title

Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Catchments

Abstract

This dataset is part of Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) of the UK, a set of geographical reference units for hydrological purposes including river flow measurement and hydrometric data collection. This dataset was derived from the Integrated Hydrological Terrain Model. A Catchment represents the full area upstream from a Section outlet, which is a cell upstream of a confluence of two watercourses with known names. While Sections do not overlap, Catchments can overlap because one Catchment contains Catchments for all upstream Sections. This layer currently covers Great Britain only as no dataset with river geometries and names with suitable detail is available for Northern Ireland.

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

http://eidc.ceh.ac.uk/metadata/10d419c8-8f65-4b85-a78a-3d6e0485fa1f/zip_export

name: Supporting information

description: Supporting information available to assist in re-use of this dataset.

function: information

https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/download?fileIdentifier=10d419c8-8f65-4b85-a78a-3d6e0485fa1f

name: Download the data

description: Get a copy of this data

function: order

https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/maps/cca47088-8cdd-4d7a-86b4-90f0a1766364?request=getCapabilities&service=WMS

name: Map view service

description: This link returns a WMS GetCapabilities response in XML format

Unique resource identifier

code

1425380855141

codeSpace

CEH:EIDC:

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

authority code

urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG

code identifying the spatial reference system

27700

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

inlandWaters

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Hydrography

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-01

Keyword set

keyword value

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GeoNames

reference date

date type

creation

effective date

2006-01-01

Keyword set

keyword value

catchment

watershed

hydrology

Great Britain

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-8.648

East bounding longitude

1.768

North bounding latitude

60.861

South bounding latitude

49.864

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

2014-08-20

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-02-05

date type

creation

effective date

2014-08-20

Frequency of update

irregular

Quality and validity

Lineage

The main inputs for development of Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) of the UK were data held by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Specifically, the cumulative catchment area raster and outflow raster from the Integrated Hydrological Digital Terrain Model (IHDTM) [1]. The vast majority of the watercourse names come from the subset of CEH UK river centreline network enriched by names from Ordnance Survey 1:50K Gazetteer [2]. Some names were obtained from or verified using other readily available sources like OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org) and WikiPedia (wikipedia.org). Bespoke FORTRAN functions, part of the CEH Flood Estimation Handbook code set, were used for catchment delineation. These functions enable sensible interlocking catchments boundaries to be created for the whole IHDTM surface. The option that does not leave gaps between catchments was specified [1]. Except for the catchment delineation, ArcGIS was used as the main GIS platform. Custom Python code was developed to drive the whole process and to perform hierarchical and network tasks. The full name of each IHU Section was derived from three rivers defining the section: the largest (in terms of cumulative catchment area) inflowing river other than the main river in the Section, the main river in the Section, and the largest river flowing into the downstream Section. If no such inflows exist, words'Source', 'Sea', or the name of the main river in the downstream Section are used as appropriate. A similar approach was adopted for IHU Group names, although group names were edited manually to a great extent to ensure they are simple and readily understood. [1] Morris, D.G. and Flavin, R.W. 1990. A Digital Terrain Model for Hydrology. Proc 4th Int. Symposium on Spatial Data Handling. Zurich, 1, 250-262. [2] Moore R V, Morris D G and Flavin R W, 1994. Sub-set of UK digital 1:50,000 scale river centreline network. NERC, Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford.

Conformity

Data format

name of format

MapInfo tab

version of format

unknown

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

If you reuse this data, you should cite: Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Catchments. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/10d419c8-8f65-4b85-a78a-3d6e0485fa1f

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Environmental Information Data Centre

email address

eidc@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

custodian

Responsible party

organisation name

NERC Environmental Information Data Centre

email address

eidc@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

publisher

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

Environmental Information Data Centre

full postal address

Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg

Lancaster

LA1 4AP

UK

email address

eidc@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2019-05-14T12:07:22

Metadata language

eng