Hello,
At first, let me express my gratitude for all these wonderful datasets, they’re among the best available on the internet!
I would like to have some details regarding the data available in the Rivers and Lake Centerlines dataset.
How the fields “StrokeWeig” and “Scalerank” have been built? What is the units of the first one? On which basis is a river assigned a given value and not another?
I looked for a codebook without result. Hope you can provide me that information.
Thank you for your help
Damien
@Damien: Glad you like Natural Earth!
ScaleRank is a curated list of rivers that are regionally important at each “zoom” of the map. When the map is zoomed in more, more rivers should show. These integer values allow you to quickly throttle the amount of content visible. They are partly based on river discharge, but moderated a good bit to make sure there is balanced coverage.
StrokeWeight is a curated appearance guide for how thick to make the river stroke in points. River mouths should be thicker than their headwaters. Bigger rivers (more discharge) should have thicker mouths than minor rivers.
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