Contact: Md Safat Sikder (msikder@ksu.edu), Jida Wang (jidawang@ksu.edu; gdbruins@ucla.edu)

Citation

If you use Lake-TopoCat, please cite the following ESSD preprint for now:

Sikder, M. S., Wang, J., Allen, G. H., Sheng, Y., Yamazaki, D., Song, C., Ding, M., Crétaux, J.-F., and Pavelsky, T. M., 2023. Lake-TopoCat: A global lake drainage topology and catchment dataset. Earth System Science Data Discussion, in review, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2022-433.

Data description and components
This version of Lake-TopoCat was constructed using the HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al., 2016) lake mask and the 3-arc-second-resolution hydrography dataset MERIT Hydro v1.0.1 (Yamazaki et al., 2019). The drainage type of each HydroLAKES lake, such as isolated, inflow-headwater, headwater, flow-through, terminal, and coastal, was determined with assistance of MERIT Hydro-Vector (Lin et al., 2021), a high-resolution river network dataset with spatially-variable drainage densities.

For convenience, the global landmass (excluding Antarctica) was partitioned to 68 Pfafstetter Level-2 basins or regions, and the Lake-TopoCat data products were also organized based on these 68 regions, with their region or basin IDs shown in the Fig. 'Pfaf2_basins.jpg', attached to this database.

Lake-TopoCat consists of five feature components, each with multiple attributes depicting lake drainage relationships. The five features are:

1. Lake boundaries: polygons of 1,426,967 HydroLAKES lakes, larger than 10 ha.

File name: Lakes_pfaf_xx where, 'pfaf_xx' indicates the Pfafstetter Level-2 basin ID (shown in Fig. 'Pfaf2_basins.jpg')

2. Lake outlets: points representing outlet or pour points of each individual lake. There are multiple outlets from a multifurcation lake. We identified 1,459,201 outlets for 1,426,967 lakes, where 29,190 lakes (~2% of the global lakes) show bi/multifurcation.

File name: Outlets_pfaf_xx

3. Unit catchment: boundary polygons of catchment defining the drainage areas between cascading (i.e., immediately upstream and downstream) lake outlets. The count of unit catchments equal to the count of lake outlets, and bifurcation or multifurcation lakes have multiple local catchments. In total, the delineated catchments in Lake-TopoCat cover about 77.5 million km2, which is about 57% of the Earth’s land mass excluding the Antarctic.

File name: Catchments_pfaf_xx

4. Inter-lake reaches: line features defining the drainage networks that connect the lake outlets to the inland sinks or the ocean. About 3 million connecting reaches were generated among ~1.4 million outlets. The total length of these inter-lake connecting reaches is ~10 million km.

File name: Reaches_pfaf_xx

5. Lake-network basins: boundary polygons of the entire drainage area containing each inter-lake network (i.e., a complete basin from the headwater to an inland sink or the ocean for all basins containing lakes). A total of 47,340 lake-network basins were identified. Among them, endorheic basins account for 5.1% by count and 18% by area of all lake-network basins. These endorheic basins cover ~15.4% of global surface excluding Antarctica.

File name: Basins_pfaf_xx

The attribute tables for each of the feature components are explained in Section 4 of the product description document. For user convenience, we release the preliminary Lake-TopoCat lake outlets, unit catchments, and inter-lake reaches, with the affix '_prelim' in the file names (explained in the attached product description document). We also provide the polygon boundaries of the 68 Pfafstetter basins or regions in the file named 'Pfaf2_regions'. All files of Lake-TopoCat are available in both shapefile and geodatabase formats.

Disclaimer
Authors of this dataset claim no responsibility or liability for any consequences related to the use, citation, or dissemination of Lake-TopoCat.

Lake-TopoCat provides a global-scale dataset that links lakes with their drainage topology, delineates catchments, defines inter-lake pathways, and quantifies topological attributes (upstream/downstream relationships, drainage distances, outlet multiplicity, etc.). The input is based on HydroLAKES v1.0 and MERIT Hydro (3 arcsec), with algorithms to detect possible lake bifurcation, unit catchment delineation, reach segmentation, and network attribution. The database includes:

• Lake boundary polygons (same as HydroLAKES) enriched with drainage attributes
• Lake outlet points
• Unit catchment polygons corresponding to each lake outlet
• Inter-lake reach lines connecting outlets
• Lake-network basins (basin polygons delineating the full drainage domain of each lake network)

It covers ~1.43 million lakes (≥10 ha) and ~1.46 million outlets globally, and ~3 million inter-lake reaches, spanning ~77.5 × 10⁶ km² of catchment coverage (≈ 57 % of global landmass, excluding Antarctica). The dataset is freely available via Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7916729) and is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Contact: Md Safat Sikder (mssikder@illinois.edu), Jida Wang (jidaw@illinois.edu)

Citation

Sikder, M. S., Wang, J., Allen, G. H., Sheng, Y., Yamazaki, D., Crétaux, J.-F., and Pavelsky, T. M., 2024. HarP: Harmonized Prior river-lake database. Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14205131.

If you only use the PLD-TopoCat dataset, please cite the following paper:

Sikder, M. S., Wang, J., Allen, G. H., Sheng, Y., Yamazaki, D., Song, C., Ding, M., Crétaux, J.-F., and Pavelsky, T. M., 2023. Lake-TopoCat: A global lake drainage topology and catchment dataset. Earth System Science Data, 15, 3483-3511, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-3483-2023.

Data description and components

The Harmonized Prior river-lake database (HarP) for SWOT integrated the SWOT River Database (SWORD) (Altenau et al., 2021) and the SWOT Prior Lake Database (PLD) (Wang et al., 2023) into a geometrically (lake/river) explicit but topologically harmonized vector database to allow for coupled fluvial-lacustrine applications, including a synergistic use of both river and lake products from SWOT.

In addition to the input river network (SWORD v16) and lake database (PLD v106), we used the MERIT Hydro v1.0.1 (Yamazaki et al., 2019), a high-resolution (~90 m) global hydrography dataset, to develop this database.

The SWORD-PLD harmonization process involves three major steps, with Step 3 being divided into three sub-steps. The processing chain is illustrated in the attached Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg", as well as in Section 2 of the product description document. The HarP database consists of the outputs from each of the steps. For convenience, the global landmass (excluding Antarctica) was partitioned to 68 Pfafstetter Level-2 basins/regions, with their IDs shown in Figure "Pfaf2_basins.jpg" attached.

The HarP database consists of five datasets or components (outputs from each step), each with multiple features. The five datasets are described below, and more details are elaborated in the product description document.

1. Harmonized SWORD-PLD (file name "Harmonized_SWORD_PLD"): This is the fully harmonized SWORD-PLD dataset, the primary product of HarP (i.e., output of Step 3.3 in Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg"). This dataset couples SWORD and PLD into a geometrically segmented but topologically integrated dataset at the node, reach, and catchment scales (stored by three feature layers, respectively):

(a) Harmonized feature nodes: Harmonized_feature_nodes_pfaf_xx
(b) Harmonized river network: Harmonized_river_network_pfaf_xx
(c) Harmonized feature catchments: Harmonized_feature_catchments_pfaf_xx
Note: ''pfaf_xx'' indicates the Pfafstetter Level-2 basin ID (shown in Fig. 'Pfaf2_basins.jpg').

Figure "HarP_example.jpg", attached to this database, is an example of the fully harmonized SWORD-PLD dataset for the Ohio River Basin. The example shows three main features of the dataset: feature nodes (i.e., reach downstream ends, lake inlets, and lake outlets; see Fig. 3 in the product description document for definitions), river reaches (i.e., reaches characterized by SWORD alone, characterized by TopoCat alone, and shared by both SWORD and TopoCat), and catchments segmented by each of the feature nodes.

2. Intersected SWORD-PLD drainage configuration (file name "Intersected_SWORD_PLD"): This dataset is the intersected SWORD-PLD (prior river-lake) features (i.e., output of Step 2 in Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg"). This dataset was constructed independently from Step 1 and Step 3. In this dataset, the original geometries of SWORD and PLD are not altered, but instead, their geometric and drainage topological relationships are configured in the attribute tables. This dataset consists of three features:

(a) Intersected reaches: Intersected_SWORD_reaches_pfaf_xx
(b) Intersected nodes: Intersected_SWORD_nodes_pfaf_xx
(c) Intersected lakes: Intersected_PLD_lakes_pfaf_xx

3. PLD-TopoCat (file name "PLD_TopoCat"): This dataset is the lake drainage topology and catchments (TopoCat) for PLD lakes (i.e., output of Step 1 in Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg"). PLD-TopoCat was developed to generate detailed lake drainage topology and connecting paths, which were later used to configure the off-SWORD-network PLD lakes into the tributaries that drain to SWORD. PLD-TopoCat was generated from PLD v106 and MERIT Hydro. Details of the developiong process and algorithm for TopoCat can be found at Sikder at al., (2023). PLD-TopoCat dataset contains six features:

(a) Lake original polygon: PLD_lakes_pfaf_xx
(b) Lake raster polygon: Lake_raster_polygons_pfaf_xx
(c) Lake outlets: Lake_outlets_pfaf_xx
(d) Lake catchments: Lake_catchments_pfaf_xx
(e) Inter-lake reaches: Inter_lake_reaches_pfaf_xx
(f) Lake-network basins: Lake_network_basins_pfaf_xx
Note: full version of the PLD-TopoCat is available here.

4. SWORD-mirror network (file name "SWORD_mirror"): The SWORD-mirror network was constructed to facilitate the SWORD-TopoCat network merging process (i.e., output of Step 3.1 in Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg"). It is essentially a replica of SWORD except that the original SWORD reaches are geometrically modified to be aligned with the topological/hydrographic information depicted in MERIT Hydro. The SWORD-mirror network consists of four features:

(a) SWORD-original reaches: SWORD_original_reaches_pfaf_xx
(b) SWORD-mirror prelim. reaches: SWORD_mirror_prelim_reaches_pfaf_xx
(c) SWORD-mirror reaches: SWORD_mirror_reaches_pfaf_xx
(d) SWORD-mirror reach catchments: SWORD_mirror_reach_catchments_pfaf_xx

5. Merged SWORD-mirror – TopoCat network (file name "SWORD_TopoCat_merged"): This dataset is the output of Step 3.2 in Figure "SWORD-PLD_harmonization_steps.jpg". It is essentially the merged product of the inter-lake reaches (from Step 2) and SWORD-mirror reaches (from Step 3.1). The merged SWORD-mirror – TopoCat network consists of three features:

(a) Merged SWORD-TopoCat reaches: SWORD_TopoCat_merged_reaches_pfaf_xx
(b) SWORD nodes at SWORD-TopoCat confluence: SWORD_TopoCat_confluence_nodes_pfaf_xx
(c) Reach catchments for merged network: SWORD_TopoCat_reach_catchments_pfaf_xx

The attribute tables for each of the feature components are explained in Section 4 of the product description document. All files of HarP are available in both shapefile and geodatabase formats.

Disclaimer
Authors of this dataset claim no responsibility or liability for any consequences related to the use, citation, or dissemination of HarP. For any quesitons, please contact Safat Sikder and Jida Wang.

Contact: Md Safat Sikder (msikder@ksu.edu), Jida Wang (jidawang@ksu.edu; gdbruins@ucla.edu)

Data description

This data can be considered a supplement to the Georeferenced global Dams And Reservoirs (GeoDAR) dataset (doi:10.5281/zenodo.6163413).

Here in GeoDAR-TopoCat, the method of TopoCat (doi:10.5281/zenodo.7420810) has been applied on GeoDAR reservoirs in order to construct the drainage topology and catchments for global reservoirs.

To avoid ambiguity, please refer to this version of GeoDAR-TopoCat as “GeoDAR-TopoCat v1.1-1.0”, where “1.1” specifies the version of GeoDAR reservoirs, whose drainage topology and catchments are constructed using the method in version “1.0” of TopoCat.

Relevant datasets

• The original GeoDAR v1.1 dataset without topology can be accessed here: doi:10.5281/zenodo.6163413.
• The TopoCat v1.0 dataset, originally developed based on HydroLAKES v1.0, can be accessed here: doi:10.5281/zenodo.7420810.

Attribute description

Description of the attributes of GeoDAR-TopoCat is the same as those of TopoCat v1.0. The unique ID of each GeoDAR reservoir is specified in “id_v11” (consistent with the GeoDAR dataset). Please refer to the attributes of TopoCat and GeoDAR for more details.

Data and code availability

All datasets are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

Please refer to GeoDAR and TopoCat datasets for other details and disclaimers.

Citation

We request anyone who uses GeoDAR-TopoCat to cite both GeoDAR and TopoCat papers:

Wang, J., Walter, B. A., Yao, F., Song, C., Ding, M., Maroof, A. S., Zhu, J., Fan, C., McAlister, J. M., Sikder, M. S., Sheng, Y., Allen, G. H., Crétaux, J.-F., and Wada, Y.: GeoDAR: georeferenced global dams and reservoirs database for bridging attributes and geolocations. Earth System Science Data, 14, 1869-1899, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1869-2022.

Sikder, M. S., Wang, J., Allen, G. H., Sheng, Y., Yamazaki, D., Song, C., Ding, M., Crétaux, J.-F., and Pavelsky, T. M., 2023. Lake-TopoCat: A global lake drainage topology and catchment dataset. Earth System Science Data Discussion, in review, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2022-433.

Documented March 19, 2023

!!NEW!!!

GeoDAR reservoirs were registered to the drainage network! Please see the auxiliary data "GeoDAR-TopoCat" at https://zenodo.org/records/7750736. "GeoDAR-TopoCat" contains the drainage topology (reaches and upstream/downstream relationships) and catchment boundary for each reservoir in GeoDAR, based on the algorithm used for Lake-TopoCat (doi:10.5194/essd-15-3483-2023).

Documented April 1, 2022

Citation

Wang, J., Walter, B. A., Yao, F., Song, C., Ding, M., Maroof, A. S., Zhu, J., Fan, C., McAlister, J. M., Sikder, M. S., Sheng, Y., Allen, G. H., Crétaux, J.-F., and Wada, Y.: GeoDAR: georeferenced global dams and reservoirs database for bridging attributes and geolocations. Earth System Science Data, 14, 1869–1899, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1869-2022.

Please cite the reference above (which was fully peer-reviewed), NOT the preprint version. Thank you.

Contact

Dr. Jida Wang, jidawang@ksu.edu, gdbruins@ucla.edu

Data description and components

Data folder “GeoDAR_v10_v11” (.zip) contains two consecutive, peer-reviewed versions (v1.0 and v1.1) of the Georeferenced global Dams And Reservoirs (GeoDAR) dataset:

• GeoDAR_v10_dams (in both shapefile format and the comma-separated values (csv) format): GeoDAR version 1.0, including 22,560 dam points georeferenced based on the World Register of Dams (WRD), the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD; https://www.icold-cigb.org; last access on March 13th, 2019).
• GeoDAR_v11_dams (in both shapefile and csv): GeoDAR version 1.1 dam points, including 24,783 dams which harmonized GeoDAR_v10_dams and the Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD) v1.3 (Lehner et al., 2011).
• GeoDAR_v11_reservoirs (in shapefile): GeoDAR version 1.1 reservoirs, including 21,515 reservoir polygons retrieved by associating GeoDAR_v11_dams with GRanD v1.3 reservoirs, HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al., 2016), and the UCLA Circa 2015 Lake Inventory (Sheng et al., 2016). The reservoir retrieval follows a one-to-one relationship between dams and reservoirs.

As by-products of GeoDAR harmonization, folder “GeoDAR_v10_v11” also contains:

• GRanD_v13_issues.csv: This file contains the original records of all 7,320 dam points in GRanD v1.3, with 94 of them marked by our identified issues and suggested corrections. These 94 records are placed at the beginning of this table. They include 89 records showing possible georeferencing and/or attribute errors, and another 5 records documented as subsumed or replaced. Our added fields start from column BG and include:
  • “Issue”: main issue(s) of this record
  • “Description”: more detailed explanation of the issue
  • “Lat_corrected”: suggested correction for latitude (if any) in decimal degree
  • “Lon_corrected”: suggested correction for longitude (if any) in decimal degree
  • “Correction_source”: correction source(s)
  • “Harmonized”: whether this GRanD dam was harmonized in GeoDAR v1.1 and the reason.
• Wada_et_al_2017_harmonized.csv: This csv file contains the original records of all 139 georeferenced large dams/reservoirs in Wada et al. (2017; doi:10.1007/s10712-016-9399-6), with our revised storage capacities and spatial coordinates for data harmonization. Our added fields start from column E and include:
  • Revised_capacity_km3: Our revised reservoir storage capacity in cubic kilometers used for harmonization
  • Revised_lat: Revised latitude in decimal degree
  • Revised_lon: Revised longitude in decimal degree
  • Verification_notes: Description of the issues, verification sources, and other information used for harmonization.

Attribute description