Global River Border Database
DATABASE UPDATE: I am currently in the process of updating the database. After a couple of years of updating the river-specific dialog boxes, I have decided to go in a new direction. The updated database and analysis should be available in summer of 2025! For now, I have not taken down the database as it stands but it will not be updated in its present format.
About the database:
This database was built using various platforms and technologies. The intellectual backbone of the website is the International River Boundaries Database (IBRD) at Durham University. This database contains information about river borders worldwide, including Google Earth files wherever available. It is a database of all recognized and de facto boundaries worldwide. The latter category is important because it recognizes the iterative nature of borders, especially when they are drawn along or across rivers.
As a searchable database, the IRBD is a phenomenal source of knowledge. However, visually, it does not allow the user to sit back and look at river borders in a regional, national, and/or global context. Hence the need for this database.
Much like the IRBD, this database is also dynamic. Because the IRBD estimates river borders using Google Earth, particularly contested or uncontested rivers are hard to map because they do not often show up on public maps. For example, the Myanmar-India border, according to IRBD consists of 43 river sections. However, most of these are not highlighted on any public maps, so the IRBD doesn’t have Google Earth files for these. Despite my attempts to find these sections, I have only been able to highlight nine on this database. There are many other examples like this. These limitations only further highlight how fluid river borders are.
The visual backbone of this database is formed by multiple technologies. To begin with, I used public access shape files from the World Bank, the Global Runoff Data Center (part of the World Meteorological Organization) which produced the Major River Basins of the World, and a shapefile of the world's border (available here). In QGIS, I then layered all these shape files and began cutting them up to show all the major river borders. I cut out all the non-border rivers to be able to highlight only the border rivers and, most importantly to cut out the noise. If I did not do that, the map would be extremely chaotic. Once I finished doing that, I needed to export this new shapefile into mapbox studio. Once that was done, I went back to the IRBD to then cross-reference these rivers and highlight individual rivers using pop-ups and labels. I manually entered over 900 markers and have entered descriptions i.e. pop-up information for a number of them. That is an evolving number. I hope to cover the entire globe soon. Translating the IRBD into a visual map with information was undeniably time-consuming and frustrating when I accidentally broke the code. It was, more importantly, an immense learning experience because I physically mapped and marked de facto rover borders across the world. Inevitably, I ended up looking up information about border rivers that I did not know about! For example, the Shattal-al-Arab, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is the border between Iraq and Iran near its mouth. During the first Iran-Iraq War between 1980-1988, the river was an important focal point with regard to navigation rights. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the river was again important as it was the only outlet to the Persian Gulf and an important waterway to transport humanitarian aid.
Some of the markers also highlight triple frontiers i.e. confluences of rivers that act as border demarcations for three countries. The most famous one is perhaps the Triple Frontier between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, where the Parana and Iguazu Rivers meet. Some of these labels have more information about the rivers themselves. There are about a dozen or so rivers: The Amazon; the Rhine; the Volga; Nile; Danube; Inn; Bug; Mura; Senegal; Makona; Zambezi; Congo; Niger; Rio Grande; Colorado; Indus; Mekong; Salween; the Detroit River.