This polyline shapefile depicts single-line drainages and lake centerlines worldwide with scale rankings. Ranked by relative importance. Includes name and line width attributes for creating tapered drainages. River data is primarily derived from the World Data Bank 2. All rivers received manual smoothing and position adjustments to fit shaded relief generated from SRTM Plus elevation data, which is more recent and (presumably) more accurate. Does not include intermittent rivers (e.g. large seasonal rivers in Australia draining to Lake Eyre playas). Rivers in northeastern Russia and parts of the Amazon basin have suspect alignments. These data are represented at 1:50,000,000 scale. This layer is part of the Natural Earth Collection (v.2.0.0). Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10, 1:50 and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software. Kelso, N.V. and Patterson, T. (2012). World River and Lake Centerlines with Scale Ranking, 1:50 million (2012). Made with Natural Earth, online at http://www.naturalearthdata.com.