Datasets and codes for "Environmental Controls on Spatial Variability in Catchment Transit Times: A Global Cross-study Synthesis"

Full description

A global compilation of catchment water transit times and the environmental attributes needed to interpret them. The dataset brings together 517 published estimates of mean transit time (246) and young water fraction (271) from 21 studies, covering 314 catchments worldwide, 58 of which carry both metrics. Each estimate retains the methodological metadata that makes cross-study comparison possible: the tracer used, the modelling approach, the assumed transit-time distribution, and the monitoring period. Every catchment is paired with 38 environmental characteristics extracted consistently from global products, spanning hydroclimate, topography, soil, geology, and land use and land cover, together with its delineated boundary and snapped outlet. Variables are provided both in native units and on the transformed, standardised scale used for modelling, with the transformation parameters included so either can be reconstructed. The archive also contains the complete analysis pipeline: a three-stage mixed-effects framework that separates environmental controls on transit time from the methodological choices made by the original studies, with all intermediate results and the code that regenerates every figure and table of the accompanying paper-"Environmental Controls on Spatial Variability in Catchment Transit Times: A Global Cross-study Synthesis", which aims to submit to the Water Resource Research. In "Dataset" subfolder, it includes two analysis-ready panels (CSV), the source compilation and environmental predictors in native units (XLSX), catchment boundaries and outlets (GeoPackage and shapefile), with a data dictionary describing every column. In the "Code" subfolder, it includes multiple pieces of R scripts with a documented function library for data exploring and analysis, associated with the paper's methods. The output and figures asscociated with the paper are in the "Output" subfolder. The "README.txt" introduce the data structure and content.

Notes

100 MB.

Significance statement

The first complied global dataset of the catchment mean transit time (MTT) and young water fraction (Fyw) for 314 catchments covered from exsiting literature.