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Water

Global lakes (HydroLAKES)

Shoreline polygons for ~1.4 million lakes and reservoirs ≥10 ha, a lake inventory map, not river basins and not a stress index.

World map with dark-blue lake and reservoir dots clustered in known lake districts, a shoreline inventory schematic, not river basins
A Fix Planet overview after the named source: not that publisher’s official graphic. Open the source map for the current layer.
Water 2016 HydroSHEDS · HydroLAKES

What

HydroLAKES (HydroSHEDS secondary product) compiles shoreline polygons for about 1.43 million lakes and reservoirs with surface area ≥10 ha worldwide, with attributes for area, shoreline length, and modelled mean depth / volume / residence time. Co-registered to HydroSHEDS river and basin IDs. Cite Messager et al., Nature Communications 2016.

Why on this shelf

Live HydroBASINS answers “who drains where.” The shelf still has no dedicated lake card. HydroLAKES stays in the same public HydroSHEDS family already used for basins, without duplicating the Pfafstetter polygon story.

How to read it

A polygon is a lake or reservoir shoreline in the dataset, not a wetland class map (see GLWD) and not water quality. Small ponds under 10 ha are out of scope. Volume and depth for most lakes are model estimates, not bathymetric surveys. Open hydrosheds.org/products/hydrolakes for downloads; the Nature Communications paper is the scholarly cite.

Caveats

A thumbnail is lake-district density, not the HydroLAKES shapefile and not a wetland class map. Ponds under 10 ha are out of scope. Volume and depth for most lakes are model estimates, not bathymetric surveys.

Sources

License

The preview is a Fix Planet schematic of well-known lake districts, not a HydroSHEDS product figure and not a second river-basin fill. HydroLAKES is distributed with the HydroSHEDS license (cite Messager et al. 2016). Open the HydroLAKES product page for downloads.

Open source map →