The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre developed this new water dataset in the framework of the Copernicus Programme. This maps the location and temporal distribution of water surfaces at the global scale over the past 32 years and provides statistics on the extent and change of those water surfaces. The dataset, produced from Landsat imagery (courtesy USGS and NASA), will support applications including water resource management, climate modelling, biodiversity conservation and food security.
View the paper in Nature, “High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes”.
Organization: European Commission's Joint Research Centre
Learn more: Global Surface Water Explorer