Global Water Mask Tiles for NISAR Mission Derived from Multi-Source Data

Derived water mask tiles created for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission. The dataset is produced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory using multiple open datasets including JRC Global Surface Water, ESA WorldCover, OpenStreetMap, and MEaSUREs GIMP Mask. The masks are referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid.

Use Cases

• Training and validating SAR-based water detection models using the derived water mask labels.
• Assessing changes in surface water extent by comparing the JRC Global Surface Water and ESA WorldCover inputs used in the mask.
• Masking out water bodies in NISAR mission products to improve land surface analysis.
• Cross-referencing water polygons from OpenStreetMap for data quality assessment and community mapping projects.

Strengths

• Derived from multiple established sources including JRC Global Surface Water v1.3 and ESA WorldCover 10m 2020.
• Georeferenced to the standard WGS84 ellipsoid for compatibility with global geospatial products.

Limitations

• Specific spatial resolution, temporal coverage, and accuracy metrics for the final derived tiles are not provided.
• The dataset's creation date and update schedule are unknown, potentially limiting its use for time-sensitive analysis.

Provenance

Source

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.

Collection Method

Analysis and processing of multiple open datasets: JRC Global Surface Water v1.3, ESA WorldCover 10 m 2020, OpenStreetMap Water Polygons, and MEaSUREs GIMP Mask.

Geography

Global (implied by use of global input datasets).