China Large rEservoirs Attributes and dRainage boundaries (CLEAR) dataset

The China Large rEservoirs Attributes and dRainage boundaries (CLEAR) dataset is initially released as version 1.1 alongside the manuscript “Exacerbating hydrological extremes in China's large reservoir drainage areas”^[1]. While CLEAR v1.1 provides an initial inventory of 907 large reservoirs in China, it omits several reservoirs in Hong Kong and Taiwan, contains duplicate records, and restricts drainage boundaries derived from MERIT Hydro flow direction data with dam coordinates aligned to the MERIT Hydro-derived digital river network.CLEAR v1.2 addresses these issues by adding the missing reservoirs, removing duplicates, and providing drainage boundaries derived from both HydroSHEDS and MERIT Hydro flow direction data, with dam coordinates aligned to both HydroRIVERS and MERIT Hydro–Vector river networks. The updated dataset now includes 913 large reservoirs across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with refined reservoir attributes, water resource region information, and IDs of its located river reaches.<b>Dataset composition</b>The CLEAR v1.2 dataset contains three files, namely “Appendix1”, “Appendix2”, and “Appendix3”.“Appendix 1” compares the advantages and disadvantages of existing datasets regarding large dam locations and drainage boundaries in China.“Appendix 2” is the inventory list of 913 large reservoirs in China, consisting of sublists of names, attributes, and spatial information.“Appendix 3” includes the georeferenced dam coordinates and precise drainage boundaries, which include full (full upstream contributing areas) and intermediate (subtracting the areas contributed by upstream reservoirs from the full upstream areas) drainage boundaries.<b>Related publications</b>The CLEAR dataset was first released in:[1] Li, X., Wang, K., Liu, C., Zhao, G., Jiang, Z., Luo, Q., Wang, G., Zhang, D., Yu, J., Liu, X., 2025. Exacerbating hydrological extremes in China’s large reservoir drainage areas. Journal of Hydrology 659, 133297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.133297.The CLEAR v1.2 was released as an updated version in:[2] Li, X., Wang, K., Luo, Q., Wang, G., Lu, Y., Jiang, H., Yu, J., Liu, C., Liu, X., 2026. Attribution of interannual runoff magnitude and variability in China’s large reservoir drainage areas using global hydrological Models. Journal of Hydrology, 134953. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.134953.<b>Version history</b>Version 1.1:Provides an inventory of 907 large reservoirs in China, including reservoir attributes, georeferenced dam coordinates, and drainage boundaries derived from MERIT Hydro flow direction.Version 1.2:-Adds previously omitted large reservoirs in Hong Kong and Taiwan and removes duplicate records identified through user feedback.-Provides drainage boundaries derived from both HydroSHEDS and MERIT Hydro flow direction data, and dam coordinates aligned with HydroRIVERS and MERIT Hydro–Vector river networks.-Augments and refines reservoir attributes, including water resource region classifications and IDs of its located river reaches.The detailed description of the update reasons, steps, and results is provided in CLEARv1.2UpdateLog.