Land2Sea database of river drainage basin sizes, annual water discharges, and suspended sediment fluxes

The Land2Sea database contains data on the sizes of 1519 exorheic river drainage basins (79% of the exorheic land area), annual suspended sediment fluxes (593 rivers, 63% of the exorheic land area), and water discharges (1272 rivers, 76% of the exorheic land area) that have been compiled from a variety of sources. The database extends earlier compilations, such as GEMS/GLORI. The river basins are grouped into 19 large-scale drainage regions to investigate the regional variability in freshwater and sediment fluxes to various ocean basins. The annual suspended sediment flux to the coastal ocean (similar to 18.5 x 10(9) tons) is dominated by east Asia (6.1 x 10(9) tons); Arabia, India, and southeast Asia (4.3 x 10(9) tons); and eastern South America (2.4 x 10(9) tons). Small topical islands of Oceania support the highest annual sediment fluxes per drainage area (similar to 9650 t km(-2) a(-1)). Annual freshwater discharge to the coastal ocean (similar to 38,857 km(3)) is dominated by runoff from eastern South America (11,199 km(3)); east Asia (7114 km(3)); and Arabia, India, and southeast Asia (4384 km(3)). The empirical data agree well with results from global models (ART and BQART) that have been trained on a subset of the data compiled here.