ASTWBD: Global Water Bodies and Corrected Elevation at 30m Resolution

The ASTER Global Water Bodies Database (ASTWBD) Version 1 maps water bodies larger than 0.2 square kilometers globally at a 1 arc-second (approximately 30-meter) spatial resolution. It classifies water into three categories—ocean, river, or lake—and provides corrected, flattened elevation values for each, generated from ASTER imagery acquired between March 2000 and November 2013. The dataset is distributed as global tiles in GeoTIFF format, covering latitudes from 83°N to 83°S and referenced to the WGS84/EGM96 geoid.

Use Cases

• Hydrological modeling based on the global classification of rivers, lakes, and oceans.
• Correcting digital elevation models (DEMs) using the provided flattened water surface elevation values.
• Mapping shoreline changes and water body extents, aided by the manual removal of sea ice effects in high latitudes.
• Assessing global surface water distribution and connectivity from the 30-meter resolution water body delineation.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage from 83°N to 83°S, a specific geographic range explicitly stated.
• Offers a high spatial resolution of approximately 30 meters at the equator for water bodies larger than 0.2 sq km.
• Includes manual correction methods, such as the removal of sea ice effects and visual inspection of rivers, to improve accuracy.

Limitations

• The underlying source imagery has a limited temporal range (2000-2013), making the dataset unsuitable for analyzing recent changes.
• Metadata conflicts exist: the 'last updated' date differs significantly between platforms (2013 vs. 2026), creating uncertainty about versioning.
• Specific column names and total row/file counts are not provided, limiting precise understanding of the data structure.

Provenance

Source

Sensor Information Laboratory Corporation (SILC) in Tokyo, created for NASA.

Collection Method

Generated from ASTER Level 1A satellite imagery using automated water body separation and manual classification/correction techniques.

Time Range

March 1, 2000 to November 30, 2013

Freshness

2026-03-13 09:32:03.111104 (from datagov), but this conflicts with the source data end date of 2013-11-30.

Geography

Global, 83°N to 83°S