HydroLAKES v1.0

Lakes are key components of biogeochemical and ecological processes, thus knowledge about their distribution, volume and residence time is crucial in understanding their properties and interactions within the Earth system. The HydroLAKES database was designed as a digital map repository to include all lakes with a surface area of at least 10 ha with a total surface area of 2.67 × 106 km2 (1.8% of global land area), a total shoreline length of 7.2 × 106 km (about four times longer than the world’s ocean coastline) and a total volume of 181.9 × 103 km3 (0.8% of total global non-frozen terrestrial water stocks). HydroLAKES aims to be as comprehensive and consistent as possible at a global scale and contains both freshwater and saline lakes, including the Caspian Sea, as well as human-made reservoirs and regulated lakes. Users can look for alternative datasets like ReaLSAT, GLOBathy etc.