BULL Database – Spanish Basin attributes for Unravelling Learning in Large-sample hydrology

Abstract

Abstract We present a novel basin dataset for large-sample hydrological studies in Spain. BULL comprises data for 484 basins, combining hydrometeorological time series with several attributes related to geology, soil, topography, land cover, anthropogenic influence and hydroclimatology. Thus, we followed recommendations in the CARAVAN initiative for generating a truly open global hydrological dataset to collect these attributes. Several climatological data sources were used, and their data were validated by hydrological modelling. One of the main novelties of BULL compared to other national-scale datasets is the analysis of the hydrological alteration of the basins included in this dataset. This aspect is critical in countries such as Spain, which are characterised by rivers suffering from the highest levels of anthropisation. The BULL dataset is freely available at https://zenodo.org/records/10605646 .