A socio-environmental geodatabase for the transboundary Rio Grande/Río Bravo basin in 2020

The Rio Grande/Río Bravo Socio-Environmental geodatabase synthesizes a broad array of existing geospatial data sets on the social and environmental characteristics of the basin. In addition to traditional biophysical and socio-political data sets (e.g., stream network, political jurisdictions boundaries, land use and land cover), the geodatabase provides the spatial domain for a typology of institutions making decisions about water and land. The produced geodatabase aggregates 145 GIS data layers classified on five main themes: (i) Water & Land Governance, (ii) Hydrology, (iii) Water Use & Hydraulic Infrastructures, (iv) Socio-Economics, and (v) Biophysical Environment. Data sets, identified as critical by the modeling and ethnographic teams, were primarily collected from public open-access data sources, processed with ArcGIS, and documented through the FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) metadata standard. The geodatabase offers a wide range of applications for transboundary and interdisciplinary research beyond this project, such as data visualization, spatiotemporal and geostatistical analyses, and spatially explicit and socio-environmental modeling. For this project specifically, the geodatabase provides input to generate the spatially explicit environment of the ENVISION integrated simulation model.