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Monitoring visibility gaps in global river water-quality archives: a basin-scale framework for environmental
Dayu Zhu1, Minglu Ma2, Jie Zhang3
1State Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Water Security, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, 100038, China; School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Victoria, 3800, Australia.
Journal of Environmental Management
|June 13, 2026
Summary
Global river basin monitoring is often invisible in open data archives. This study identifies unmonitored areas with high population and economic exposure, guiding environmental management priorities.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Hydrology
- Data Science
Background:
- In situ environmental monitoring is crucial for effective management.
- Global assessments frequently rely on open data archives, which may not represent actual monitoring efforts but rather data visibility.
- Discrepancies exist between monitoring presence and visibility in open archives.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify global river basin monitoring visibility using harmonized datasets.
- To identify unmonitored river basins with significant human exposure for management prioritization.
- To assess the socioeconomic disparities in open-archive coverage.
Main Methods:
- Harmonized GRQA and GlobSalt datasets for 16,397 HydroBASINS level-6 basins (2010-2020).
- Quantified monitoring visibility using coverage, intensity, and continuity metrics.
- Developed an exposure proxy (upstream population, urban land fraction) to rank unrecorded basins.
Main Results:
- Only 15.2% of basins had open records, leaving 13,910 unmonitored.
- Identified 696 exposure-screened hotspot basins (22.7% population, 17.2% GDP).
- Open-archive coverage is uneven, with visible basins representing disproportionately high population and GDP.
Conclusions:
- A significant global gap exists in open-access river basin monitoring data.
- The proposed framework effectively prioritizes unmonitored basins based on exposure.
- The findings support targeted data mobilization and improved river basin monitoring design for environmental management.
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