Fish habitats, fish diets, and bathymetry for 18 terminal lakes

Terminal lakes are lakes with no hydrologic surface outflows and with losses of water occurring only through surface evaporation and groundwater discharge. We quantified the extent of the littoral zones (areas where 1% or more of surface irradiation reaches the lake bottom) and open water zones (areas where less than 1% of surface irradiation reaches the lake bottom) in 18 terminal lakes. Additionally, we quantified habitat usage and diets of the fish species inhabiting these lakes. This dataset contains includes seven lakes from North America (Atitlan, Crater, Eagle, Mann, Pyramid, Summit, Walker), one from South America (Titicaca), five from Eurasia (Caspian, Issyk-Kul, Neusiedl, Qinghai, Van), and five from Africa (Abijatta, Manyara, Nakuru, Shala, Turkana)., Measurements of the surface areas of the littoral and open water zones were performed using ArcGIS Pro Version 2.9. First, we generated year-specific digital elevation models (DEMs) of the lake’s bathymetry by a) using existing bathymetry raster data or b) by digitizing published depth contours of the lake’s bathymetry and interpolating a bathymetry raster using a natural neighbor interpolation. For several lakes that showed significant changes in lake level and where data regarding lake level change were available, we were able to produce a second year closer to the present by using the Raster Calculator function in ArcGIS Pro and then clipping the bathymetry raster to the lower lake level. This was possible for 5 of the 18 lakes (Mann Lake, Eagle Lake, Lake Abijatta, Walker Lake, and Lake Turkana), allowing us to map changes in the littoral zone size between the two years. For the lakes containing two years of data, we used only the most recent year in all subsequent analyses. We defi..., The fish habitat and diet data (All_Lakes_Fish_Data.csv) can be opened with any program capable of reading .csv files (e.g. Microsoft Excel). The GIS files can opened with any software capable of opening GIS files (e.g. ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, Google Earth)., # Fish Habitats and Diets and Interpolated Bathymetry for 18 Terminal Lakes

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Terminal lakes are lakes with no hydrologic surface outflows and with losses of water occurring only through surface evaporation and groundwater discharge. We quantified the extent of the littoral zones (areas where 1% or more of surface irradiation reaches the lake bottom) and open water zones (areas where less than 1% of surface irradiation reaches the lake bottom) in 18 terminal lakes. Additionally, we quantified habitat usage and diets of the fish species inhabiting these lakes. This dataset contains includes seven lakes in North America (Atitlan, Crater, Eagle, Mann, Pyramid, Summit, Walker), one in South America (Titicaca), five in Eurasia (Caspian, Issyk-Kul, Neusiedl, Qinghai, Van), and five in Africa (Abijatta, Manyara, Nakuru, Shala, Turkana).

## Description of the data and file structure

All of the data pertaining to fish habitat and diet is contained in All_Lakes_Fish_Data.csv. This dataset c...