Polygon dataset of the extent of water bodies from the SeaVoX Salt and Fresh Water Body Gazetteer (v18)

The dataset consists of a polygon file defining the limits of water bodies from the SeaVoX Salt and Fresh Water Body Gazetteer. SeaVoX is a combined SeaDataNet and MarineXML vocabulary content governance group, it is moderated by BODC. This polygon dataset defines the geographic extent of the terms specified by the SeaVoX vocabulary governance to describe coherent regions of the hydrosphere. It includes land masses enclosing freshwater bodies. The coastline data set used in the shapefile is taken from the World Vector Shoreline data set (scale 1:250,000). The data file follows a hierarchical structure with each region consisting of one or more polygons. This approach was adopted to avoid the need to have overlapping polygons in regions where a sea area included a number of sub-regions.