Abstract
By presenting the most comprehensive GlObal geOreferenced Database of Dams to date containing more than 38,000 dams as well as their associated catchments, we enable new and improved global analyses of the impact of dams on society and environment and the impact of environmental change (for example land use and climate change) on the catchments of dams. This paper presents the development of the global database through systematic digitisation of satellite imagery globally by a small team and highlights the various approaches to bias estimation and to validation of the data. The following datasets are provided (a) raw digitised coordinates for the location of dam walls (that may be useful for example in machine learning approaches to dam identification from imagery), (b) a global vector file of the watershed for each dam.
Highlights
Background & SummaryDams and their reservoirs play an important role in social and economic development as they help supply seasonal water needs or generate renewable energy
No reliable figures exist on the numbers of these but a study by Lehner et al.[4] estimates there may be more than 16 million smaller impoundments with surface area larger than 100 m2 with a combined surface area of around 306 000 km[2] increasing the Earth’s natural terrestrial freshwater surface by more than 7%
We focus on dams with concrete walls, observable in global satellite imagery from LANDSAT (15 m), IKONOS (
Summary
Background & SummaryDams and their reservoirs play an important role in social and economic development as they help supply seasonal water needs or generate renewable energy. To be able to identify likely locations of dams based on their reservoirs, a Google Earth visualisation of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Water Body Dataset (SWBD) (http://geodata.policysupport.org/ swbd) was used as a guide in the digitising process.
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