the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Multi-tool dataset on Northern Eurasian Riverbank Migration (NERM)
Abstract. Riverbank erosion monitoring and modeling has a long-standing tradition in Earth system science. The current body of research primarily relies on observations at the basin and reach levels. We endeavored to compile a comprehensive dataset of riverbank migration observations using a variety of measurement techniques, both field-based and remote sensing data. The dataset comprises information from twelve extensive river basins situated in Northern Eurasia, encompassing rivers that drain into the Baltic Sea, the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, and the Caspian Sea, specifically the catchments of the Vistula, Volga, Ural, Ob, Nadym, Yenisey, Lena, Indigirka, Yana, Kolyma, Amur and Kamchatka rivers. The rivers included in the dataset vary in terms of environmental conditions and have average discharges of between 0.3 and 19,700 m3/s. This study examined approximately 140,000 kilometers of rivers in Northern Eurasia, covering small, medium, and large rivers, with data from up to 70 years of water classifications obtained from satellite images, including those from LandSat and Keyhole, across 626,700 river channel segments. The dataset collected average and maximum bank retreat rates (m/year), average areas of bank retreat (m2/year), and volumes of channel erosion (t/year). It also recorded possible causes, encompassing both hydrological and catchment factors like permafrost, natural land zones, and geology. Our study showed that river discharge and permafrost distribution are the primary indicators of riverbank erosion in Northern Eurasia. These data will enhance the comprehension of bank erosion processes and their underlying factors, thereby facilitating the development of more accurate predictive models of river channels. The dataset is available open access via the ZENODO repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11072919) (Chalov et al., 2025).
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-150', Anirban Mukhopadhyay, 17 Apr 2025
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This is a significant research work presenting a multi-tool dataset of channel or river-bank erosion rates (NERM) acquired from 12 major river basins covering 250 rivers across Northern Eurasia, covering around 140,000 km2 over a 70-year span. The NERM dataset is based on integrating in-situ assessments, remote sensing data, and geospatial applications, through which the dynamics of river-bank erosion under different hydro-climatic and geomorphic conditions are modelled accurately. This dataset has underlined the research gap by emphasizing the data scarcity regarding riverbank erosion of North Eurasian rivers. Hence, the issue of data scarcity has been addressed in this work by combining the hydro-climatic and geomorphological parameters such as water discharge, permafrost zones, channel patterns, and sediment estimates. The NERM dataset efficiently addresses the research gap by providing riverbank erosion estimates using multiple techniques. It is important to erosion monitoring in long-term and large-scale comparative analyses. The inclusion of large river-deltaic systems (Kolyma, Ob, Lena, and Yensei), medium, and minor riverine systems like Sedayakha, Tyjakha, and Khaduta, as well as many other rivers across North Eurasia, within the dataset enhances the spatial heterogeneity and comparisons across climatological and geological settings.
The methodology adopted in this work for riverbank assessment is recommendable because it efficiently combines techniques, such as in-situ assessments, UAV monitoring, area-based approaches, satellite imagery analysis, GIS digitizing algorithms, and automated statistical methods. These techniques have enriched the NERM dataset and provided important insights regarding river-bank erosion dynamics, which establishes a standard for erosion-based assessments. By generating river-bank erosion estimates using different methods, this study highlights the insights and importance of site-specific deployment of methods for future erosion assessments. In addition, the systematic validation of area-based and erosion-based methods of riverbank migration estimates, within considerable error margins, highlights the credibility of the NERM dataset. Although the methods, particularly remote sensing and geospatial approaches, frequently come across several issues in delineating river bank erosion, due to variables such as forest cover, vegetation patches, shadows, and complex relief features, etc.
The techniques used for generating results are further enhanced by using the spatial-temporal comparisons and gamma distributions for the large river-deltaic systems like Lena Ob and Lena. Additionally, it quantifies thermal erosion from permafrost and climate impacts, providing insights into future projections of riverine dynamics. Furthermore, the discussion part involves the analysis of several factors inducing riverbank migration across the river basin of Northern Eurasia. Then this work becomes immensely significant due to the development of interactive web platform GISCARTA developed to provision access to the NERM database, which is enabling its visualization and acquisition of key outputs of this study such as bank erosion/ retreat rates, erosion area, sediment yield etc in accessible file formats. The user-friendly interface of the GISCARTA platform' with regular updates is essential for researchers to monitor and analyse the fluvial processes across the riverine systems of different spatio-temporal scale.
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It can be concluded by stating that this research work is highly recommendable due to the incorporation of the river basins of different spatiotemporal scales and assessing the scenario of riverbank erosion via suitable methods, which will give ideas to other researchers to apply site-specific methods for assessing riverbank erosion. It is noteworthy that different estimates have been completed to form a database or dataset of NERM, which is promoting advances in the domain of fluvial geomorphology by being an interactive source in the form of GISCARTA platforms, providing access to the estimates generated through detailed, multi-scale assessment of riverbank erosion processes across Northern Eurasia.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-150-RC1
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Multi-tool dataset on Northern Eurasian Riverbank Migration (NERM) Sergey R. Chalov et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11072919
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