Introducing Caravan-Qual: A comprehensive global river water quality dataset

Here, we introduce Caravan-Qual, a new water quality dataset which represents the first global integration with large-sample hydrology. The dataset contains >70 million river water quality observations covering 100 water quality constituents, compiled from a range of national-to-global datasets covering the period of 1980-2025. By leveraging the Caravan dataset and open-source software, we have matched water water quality monitoring stations to streamflow gauges and have derived meterological variables which together provide contextual environmental data which is envisaged to aid our understanding of the water quality data and facilitate research into topics including:

• Spatio-temporal analysis of river water quality dynamics at local to global scales.
• Investigation of the relationships between (constituent-specific) river water quality responses and hydrological, meteorological and catchment characteristics.
• The development and evaluation of process-based, hybrid and data-driven water quality models across diverse hydrological and climatic conditions.