Improvements on the Pfafstetter basin coding system proposal

ABSTRACT The coding basin system proposed by Pfafstetter (1989) is an important reference point and adopted by the principal water resources management system in the world. This adoption is due to the method’s simplicity and the topological relationship between the river stretches built-into the codes. Otherwise, the Pfafstetter basin coding system can only be applied in a hydrographic vector represented by an anti-arborescence binary graph. This type of representation causes loss of hydrographic information due to the simplification of regions where there are anabranching, braided or delta areas that implies multiple confluences, cycles or disruptions of the network. This paper proposes improvements to the Pfafstetter basin coding system, maintaining it simple, while keeping the topological relationship between the stretches and including the possibility to represent the hydrography with multiple confluences, cycles, delta mouths, sinks, water masses and disruptions to drainage.