LimnoSat-US: Lake Reflectance Data from Landsat 1984-2020

Over 22 million individual observations provide median reflectance values for 56,792 U.S. lakes across more than 328,000 Landsat scenes. This analysis-ready database spans 36 years, with cloud, shadow, snow, ice, and macrophyte effects removed and includes cross-sensor standardization. The dataset supports long-term monitoring of water quality and ecological changes in inland water bodies.

Use Cases

• Tracking long-term water color and clarity trends based on multi-decadal reflectance time series.
• Modeling lake ecosystem responses to environmental change using pre-processed, cloud-free observations.
• Flagging potential reflectance noise from aquatic vegetation using the pCount_dswe3 column.
• Joining scene-level metadata like cloud cover and sun angle for atmospheric correction analysis.
• Calculating dominant wavelength (dWL) for studies of lake optical properties.

Strengths

• Contains over 22 million individual lake observations, providing a large-scale temporal record.
• Data is pre-processed to remove confounding factors like clouds, shadows, snow, ice, and macrophytes.
• Covers a long temporal range of 36 years (1984-2020) for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes cross-sensor standardization across Landsat missions, enhancing comparability over time.

Limitations

• Specific column names and the total row count for the main table are not explicitly listed in the provided sources.
• The last update date for the dataset is unknown, which may affect perceived freshness.
• The dataset is limited to lakes within the United States, as defined by the HydroLakes database.

Provenance

Source

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (author: Simon Topp).

Collection Method

Reflectance values extracted from Google Earth Engine for U.S. lakes using provided Python code, processed with R.

Time Range

1984 to 2020

Geography

Lakes within the United States, based on the HydroLakes database.