Rivers form channel belts that encompass the area of the river channel and its associated levees, bars, splays and overbank landforms. The channel belt is critical for understanding the physical river evolution through time, predicting river behavior and management of freshwater resources. To date, there is no global-scale, quantitative study of the extent of river channel belts. Here we show, based on a pattern recognition algorithm, the global surface area of channel belts at an approximate 1 km resolution is 30.5 × 10⁵km², seven times larger than the extent of river channels. We find 52% of river channels associated with the channel belts have a multi-threaded planform with the remaining 48% being single-threaded by surface area. The global channel belt (GCB) datasets provide new methods for high-resolution global scale landform classifications and for incorporating the channel belt into flood mitigation, freshwater budgets, ecosystem accounting and biogeochemical analyses.

河流形成河道带，包括河道区域及其相关的堤坝、堤坝、河滩和河岸地貌。河道带对于了解河流随时间的物理演化、预测河流行为和淡水资源管理至关重要。迄今为止，还没有对河道带范围进行全球范围的定量研究。在这里，我们基于模式识别算法显示，在大约 1 km 的分辨率下，通道带的全球表面积为 30.5 × 10 ⁵ km ², 是河道范围的七倍。我们发现 52% 的与河道带相关的河道具有多线程平面形状，其余 48% 的表面积为单线程。全球河道带 (GCB) 数据集为高分辨率全球尺度地貌分类以及将河道带纳入防洪、淡水预算、生态系统核算和生物地球化学分析提供了新方法。