Development and validation of a global database of lakes, reservoirs and wetlands

Drawing upon a variety of existing maps, data and information, a new Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) has been created. The combination of best available sources for lakes and wetlands on a global scale (1: 1 to 1:3 million resolution), and the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) functionality enabled the generation of a database which focuses in three coordinated levels on (1) large lakes and reservoirs, (2) smaller water bodies, and (3) wetlands. Level 1 comprises the shoreline polygons of the 3067 largest lakes (surface area greater than or equal to50 km(2)) and 654 largest reservoirs (storage capacity greater than or equal to0.5 km(3)) worldwide, and offers extensive attribute data. Level 2 contains the shoreline polygons of approx. 250,000 smaller lakes, reservoirs and rivers (surface area; greater than or equal to0.1 km(2)), excluding all water bodies of level 1. Finally, level 3 represents lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and different wetland types in the form of a global raster map at 30-second resolution, including all water bodies of levels 1 and 2. In a validation against documented data, GLWD proved to represent a comprehensive database of global lakes 1 km(2) and to provide a good representation of the maximum global wetland extent. GLWD-1 and GLWD-2 establish two global polygon maps to which existing lake registers, compilations or remote sensing data can be linked in order to allow for further analyses in a GIS environment. GLWD-3 may serve as an estimate of wetland extents for global hydrology and climatology models, or to identify large-scale wetland distributions and important wetland complexes. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.