Extended Data Fig. 4: Spatial comparison of surface water connectivity change rates: Trigg et al. vs. this study.
From: Global net increase in surface water connectivity in river–floodplain systems
The upper maps (a, b) illustrate the spatial patterns of surface water connectivity change rates derived using the method proposed by Trigg et al.21, while the lower maps (c, d) show results calculated using our surface water connectivity index. The left-hand maps (a, c) represent the change rates between the periods 1984–1999 and 2000–2009, while the right-hand maps (b, d) depict the change rates between 2000–2009 and 2010–2019. Dark gray regions indicate areas with insufficient satellite coverage during earlier periods, which were excluded from the analysis. Notably, basin connectivity in this figure was calculated by averaging all water pixels across river–floodplain systems to maintain a consistent study area and facilitate comparison between the two studies, which differed from other figures in our study. Basemaps from Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com) with global basin (level-4) data from the HydroBASINS dataset82.
