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Classifying the world's rivers

New paper by Camille Ouellet Dallaire andBernhard Lehner(McGill Department of Geography), Roger Sayre (US Geological Survey, Reston, VA) andMichele Thieme (World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC)

Source: Published January 25, 2019

Researchers have produced the first map that catalogs and classifiesall rivers in the world. In published in Environmental Research Letters, scientists from 㽶Ƶ, the U.S. Geological Survey and the World Wildlife Fund assessmore than 35 million kilometers of rivers world-wide, based on several variables. The resultingclassification produces127 types of rivers withdifferent environmental characteristics, ranging from high mountain streams to large lowland rivers, from cold Arctic to warm tropical ones, or even those,in hot arid regions, thatmay be dry most of the year but flow occasionally. "Having a map like this will support a broad range of applications, such astesting which types of rivers are currently not well protected, which types are most at risk of being environmentally degraded, orhow to best devise international conservation and management strategies to keep them healthy,” says lead author Camille Ouellet Dallaire, a PhD student in McGill's Department of Geography.

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