River basins

An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Pioneering efforts in South Africa, Australia and the United States have shown that the process to establish them poses great challenges.

This CD provides maps of land cover, population density and biodiversity for 154 basins and sub-basins around the world. It lists indicators and variables for each of these basins and, where appropriate, provides links and references to relevant information. It further contains 20 global maps portraying relevant water resources issues. There are coloured buttons that function as a menu to select individual basins by continent.