This river network (stream lines) map for Central America is derived from the flow direction map for Central America. The flow accumulation map for Central America is used for selection and attribution. Only rivers with upstream drainage areas exceeding a certain threshold are selected: for the 15 arc-second resolution a threshold of 100 upstream cells has been used. The vectorized river reaches are attributed with the maximum flow accumulation (in number of cells) occurring within each river reach. This data is derived from elevation data of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) at 15 arc-second resolution approx. 500m at the equator. The goal of developing HydroSHEDS was to generate key data layers to support regional and global watershed analyses, hydrological modeling, and freshwater conservation planning at a quality, resolution and extent that had previously been unachievable. HydroSHEDS has been developed by the Conservation Science Program of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the Center for Environmental Systems Research (CESR) of the University of Kassel, Germany. For more information please refer to the HydroSHEDS Technical Documentation: Lehner, B., Verdin, K., Jarvis, A. (2006): HydroSHEDS Technical Documentation. World Wildlife Fund US, Washington, DC. Available at http://hydrosheds.cr.usgs.gov. Please also visit http://www.worldwildlife.org/hydrosheds and http://hydrosheds.cr.usgs.gov for information on data download and status reports. This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.