GeoFRESH – an online platform for freshwater geospatial data processing

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems are characterized by their unique longitudinal and lateral habitat connectivity. As a result, spatial units in freshwater-specific analyses can often not be considered independent of each other. Accounting for this connectivity in modelling analyses requires advanced skills in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for adequately processing and managing the data. To address this challenge, we developed the GeoFRESH online platform, which is available at https://geofresh.org. The platform provides a graphical, easy-to-use interface to create freshwater-specific analysis-ready data for any given location in the world, based on a high-resolution stream network (https://hydrography.org/hydrography90m/hydrography90m_layers). Users can (i) upload and visualize point coordinates, (ii) automatically assign points to the closest stream network segment, (iii) annotate the point data with a suite of 104 local and/or upstream-aggregated topographic, climatic, land-cover and soil variables, (iv) visualize summary plots, and (v) download the data in csv-format for further analyses. The platform can be expanded given its modular structure and it can serve as a key element to support freshwater science and management relying on high-resolution geospatial analyses. GeoFRESH provides a low-entry interface while being complementary to the hydrographr R-package, and contributes importantly to the re-usability of data as an important aspect of the FAIR principles.