Rede de drenagem: Os rios que dão as costas ao mar

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23539351

No. 037 Hydrography Water in São Paulo 2/3

Drainage network

Rivers that turn their backs on the sea

Record, downloads and citation

Map of the state of São Paulo with the HydroRIVERS river network drawn as threads that thicken with mean discharge. Rivers flowing inland, towards the River Plate basin, are dark blue and cover almost the whole state, in a fan of tributaries running north-west to the Paraná on the border; those flowing straight to the Atlantic, in clay red, fill the Paraíba do Sul valley, the coast and the Ribeira valley. The Tietê is highlighted, with its name written mid-course. Outside the state, the larger rivers appear in grey. Two callouts: the Tietê’s source, 12.5 km from the sea, and the largest mean discharge, 8,490 m³/s, on the Paraná. In the panel, the slope legend, a width scale by discharge, and bars with the kilometres of river by Strahler order. — Fig. 037 State of São Paulo (SP) EPSG:4674 Source: WWF / HydroSHEDS, IBGE

The Tietê rises 12.5 km from the sea and runs 982 km the other way, inland, to the Paraná. It is not alone: 85.7% of the area drained by São Paulo’s rivers flows inland and on down the Paraná to the River Plate, between Argentina and Uruguay. The Serra do Mar and the Mantiqueira divide the waters. Only the coastal strip, the Ribeira de Iguape and the Paraíba do Sul valley send their rain straight to the Atlantic, through 123 river mouths on the São Paulo coast. The map draws 61,009 km of rivers, each reach as wide as its mean discharge: from headwater streams to the Paraná on the state border, with 8,490 m³/s. Second plate of the collection “Water in São Paulo”.

Technical record · downloads · citation

At a glance

Layers

rios line 16,999 river reaches in the state and on its border: length, upstream area, mean discharge, Strahler order and slope
tiete line The Tietê from its source to the Paraná, 982 km
limite_estadual polygon State boundary

Metadata

Sources: WWF / HydroSHEDS — HydroRIVERS v1.0, South America (Lehner and Grill, 2013)
IBGE — Municipal Mesh 2025 (2025)
Extent: State of São Paulo (SP)
CRS / Projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674)
EPSG:4674
Software: Python · GeoPandas · GDAL · QGIS · Node.js · d3-geo
Method: HydroRIVERS reaches clipped to São Paulo, with width by modelled mean discharge and slope by the outlet of the river system; the Tietê traced from mouth to source along the reach with the largest upstream area.
Version: v1.0.0
Licence: CC BY 4.0
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23539351

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Figure to reuse

The map without a frame, with legend, scale, reference system and credit written on it: ready for papers, lectures and slides. In two versions: with the basemap (neighbours and sea) or only the mapped area, on white.

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Point a camera at it to open this page.

How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). Rede de drenagem: os rios que dão as costas ao mar [Drainage network: Rivers that turn their backs on the sea] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539351

@dataset{cerejo2026_drenagem_sp,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {Rede de drenagem: Os rios que dão as costas ao mar},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23539351},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23539351},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: Drainage network: Rivers that turn their backs on the sea. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

How to read this plate area, projection, scale, legend and source

1 Area: State of São Paulo (SP) The area the plate covers. Outside it, neighbours and sea are drawn in grey, just for orientation.
2 Coordinates and projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) The layers are in SIRGAS 2000; the drawing’s projection is written in the colophon at the foot of the panel.
3 Scale: Graphic scale bar in the panel The scale bar is true on the central meridian; away from it, measured distances vary a little.
4 Legend and layers: 3 layers in the GeoPackage · line, polygon Read the legend before the map: it tells you whether a colour is a rate or a class, and whether a circle is a total.
5 Sources: WWF / HydroSHEDS; IBGE (2025) Every figure comes from a public source, with its year. The data sheet gives each one’s address.

Anatomy of a plate Full glossary

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Layers, table and figures, under CC BY 4.0. Cite with the DOI.

Full record and citation

Method notes · No. 037

São Paulo’s drainage network and the two slopes of its water

Português · English

Plate No. 037, the second of three in the collection Water in São Paulo: after the outline of the basins, the rivers that run inside them, and where they go.

What the files contain

Layer (GPKG)	Geometry	Contents
`rios`	line	16,999 reaches: `hyriv_id`, `next_down` (next reach downstream), `main_riv` (outlet of the system), `length_km`, `dist_dn_km` and `dist_up_km` (distance to the outlet and to the farthest source), `catch_skm` (local catchment), `upland_skm` (upstream area), `dis_av_cms` (mean discharge, m³/s), `ord_stra` (Strahler order), `vertente` (slope: `prata` or `atlantico`)
`tiete`	line	the Tietê traced from mouth to source: `nome`, `comp_km`
`limite_estadual`	polygon	outline of the state

The GPKG is zipped and attached to the agua-sp-2026 release. The rios layer carries the plate’s QGIS style: blue for the Plate, clay for the Atlantic, and width growing with Strahler order.

The CSV, also in the release, holds the reach table in UTF-8, without geometry; fields keep their HydroRIVERS names, in lower case.

Method

River reaches from HydroRIVERS v1.0 (South America), read within the state’s window. The dataset is derived from HydroSHEDS terrain at 15 arc-seconds (about 500 m) and includes rivers with a catchment of at least 10 km² or a mean discharge of at least 0.1 m³/s.
Clipped to the state boundary widened by 1.5 km, so as not to cut the rivers that run along the border (Paraná, Grande, Paranapanema). Outside the state, rivers of order 3 or more are drawn in grey, as context only.
Slope: a reach belongs to the Plate when its river system (main_riv) ends at the same outlet as the Paraná trunk; the others flow straight to the Atlantic.
Tietê: starting from the Paraná tributary whose mouth lies near Itapura, with 72 thousand km² upstream, the trace climbs upriver, always taking the reach with the largest upstream area, up to the source. The distance to the sea is the shortest distance from the source to the coast.
Lengths measured on the ellipsoid, only inside the state boundary. The share of area flowing each way adds up the local catchments of reaches whose midpoint falls in São Paulo.
On the plate, each reach’s width grows with the logarithm of its mean discharge.

Limitations

HydroRIVERS is a global model: its courses follow 500 m terrain, simplify meanders and may shift a river by a few hundred metres. The Tietê’s 982 km fall slightly short of official measurements, which follow the detailed course.
Mean discharge is modelled (WaterGAP) for the 1971–2000 climate, without dams, transfers or abstractions: the Upper Tietê water pumped into the Billings reservoir and over the Serra do Mar does not appear, and the Tietê runs whole towards the interior.
The Tietê’s source is that of the HydroRIVERS trace, which starts where the catchment passes 10 km²; the recognised spring, at Salesópolis, lies a few kilometres from it.
Streams with catchments under 10 km² are left out: the real network, like the one in the Campinas riparian reserves plate, is much denser.
The split between slopes holds for rainwater on the natural terrain, not for water piped through the cities.

View this map’s folder on GitHub