National-scale, remotely sensed lake trophic status 1984-2020

Lake trophic status is a key water quality property that integrates a lake's physical, chemical, and biological processes. Despite the importance of trophic status as a gauge of lake water quality, standardized and machine readable observations are uncommon. Remote sensing presents an opportunity to detect and analyze lake trophic status with reproducible, robust methods across time and space. We used Landsat surface reflectance and lake morphometric data to create the first compendium of lake trophic status for more than 56,000 lakes of at least 10 ha in size throughout the contiguous United States from 1984 through 2020. The dataset was constructed with FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible) in mind, where data are publicly available, relational keys from parent datasets are retained, and all data wrangling and modeling routines are scripted for future reuse. Together, this resource offers critical data to address basic and applied research questions about lake water quality at a suite of spatial and temporal scales.