Alaska Lake and Pond Occurrence Map with Seasonal Fluctuations

Alaska's lakes and ponds are mapped in this spatially explicit dataset showing seasonal fluctuations. It contains over 800,000 water bodies larger than 0.001 km², derived from Sentinel-2 imagery at 10-meter resolution for the 2016-2021 ice-free seasons. The dataset was produced by ORNL_CLOUD using a U-Net model and an adaptive NDWI threshold algorithm in Google Earth Engine.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal open water occurrence percentages for individual lakes using the raster data.
• Studying spatial patterns and distributions of lakes and ponds across Alaska using the vector product.
• Validating or training machine learning models for water body identification with the U-Net derived maximum lake mask.
• Investigating interannual variability in lake extent and connectivity during the 2016-2021 period.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 10 meters from Sentinel-2 imagery.
• Near-daily temporal observation during ice-free seasons across a 6-year period (2016-2021).
• Maps over 800,000 distinct lakes and ponds using a conservative threshold.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (2026-03 13 and 2021-09-30).
• Specific column names and total row/pixel counts are not provided in the available metadata.
• Water body count depends on the chosen occurrence threshold, introducing variability.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Created using a U-Net lake identification model with manual inspection, followed by an adaptive NDWI threshold water classification algorithm run in Google Earth Engine on cloud- and ice-free Sentinel-2 imagery.

Time Range

2016-2021

Freshness

2026-03-13 19:02:09.985968

Geography

Alaska