Hi Jackie,

If you simply need the position of the rivers and not their local names, you could build your own fluvial map for the island. There are several different methods using different tools, but they all follow the same pattern:

Worldwide DEM are available free of charge, with two main options: ASTER GDEM2 data from NASA and METI (30 m, quite noisy) or the newly corrected SRTM dataset from NASA (30m as well, apparently of better quality than ASTER).

You could can process the DEM on Matlab using e.g. TopoToolBox (https://topotoolbox.wordpress.com/download/) or another toolbox like TecDEM (which I am not familiar with).

Or, if you have access to the software ArcGIS, you could follow the very well made step-by-step explanation of Skye Cooley: http://gis4geomorphology.com/watershed/ This is probably the easiest option if you are not familiar with the manipulation of DEMs (although ArcGIS makes it unnecessarily convoluted).

There are other specialized softwares like RiverTools but you probably do not have access to them.

It is probably not the simple answer you are looking for, but it will work.

Cheers

Luca

Alternatively, you could look for OpenStreetMap data, as the coverage seems to be rather good for Trinidad & Tobago. The tricky part is to get a convenient format for GIS use, eg. a shapefile. You could try South America's hydrography layers in OSM-x-tractor.

http://osm-x-tractor.org/Data.aspx

As Alessandro pointed out GIS DataDepot is always a good place to start for free GIS files for any country.  You can also try Diva-GIS.  Choose Trinidad & Tobago and Inland Waters as the subject:

http://www.diva-gis.org/gdata

Hi Jackie,

my first answer gets obviously lost. If you are interested I can email you OSM coastline, rivers, and waterbodies as shape files. I have worked with OSM in the last weeks.

Detlev

Thank you, Detlev!

I downloaded your attached file and will take a look.

So far all of the data that has been suggested is significantly lacking in the numbers of rivers they describe. Maybe the only option is to contact the Trinidad and Tobago government.

Hi Jackie,

If you simply need the position of the rivers and not their local names, you could build your own fluvial map for the island. There are several different methods using different tools, but they all follow the same pattern:

Worldwide DEM are available free of charge, with two main options: ASTER GDEM2 data from NASA and METI (30 m, quite noisy) or the newly corrected SRTM dataset from NASA (30m as well, apparently of better quality than ASTER).

You could can process the DEM on Matlab using e.g. TopoToolBox (https://topotoolbox.wordpress.com/download/) or another toolbox like TecDEM (which I am not familiar with).

Or, if you have access to the software ArcGIS, you could follow the very well made step-by-step explanation of Skye Cooley: http://gis4geomorphology.com/watershed/ This is probably the easiest option if you are not familiar with the manipulation of DEMs (although ArcGIS makes it unnecessarily convoluted).

There are other specialized softwares like RiverTools but you probably do not have access to them.

It is probably not the simple answer you are looking for, but it will work.

Cheers

Luca

Additionally, I have checked if pscoast in GMT (http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/doc/5.1.0/pscoast.html) contains rivers for Trinidad&Tobago but none are resolved. Tough luck, that would have been an easy solution.

Luca has pointed in an interesting direction. I will upload such streamlines based on the SRTM model. They are processed like Luca suggested. You have to do some smoothing, and clipping with the coastline. Maybe half an hour work. But be careful: there is no guarantee, that the these lines represent the actual water courses. 

I did that work (including water body interpretation of Landsat 7 ETM (GLC2000) and recent Landsat 8 OLI) in preparation for a mayor contract for the whole south American continent. But this contract was awarded to an even more cheaper bid, so I can give you this stuff as Halloween gift, its worthless now.

I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. Please send me an email, [email protected]. I'm always happy to help a fellow college.