Monthly Surface Water Area Statistics for West and Central Africa from 2020

Action Against Hunger ACF - Regional Office for West and Central Africa ROWCA provides monthly surface water presence statistics in square kilometers for West and Central Africa. The data is calculated from November 2020 onwards at four administrative levels (Admin 0, 1, 2, 3) using 100m resolution Copernicus Land Monitoring Service imagery. Administrative boundaries are sourced from OCHA, and the dataset was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Tracking seasonal and interannual surface water variability based on monthly statistics from November 2020.
• Analyzing water presence at different administrative levels (Admin 0-3) for regional planning and resource management.
• Monitoring potential flood or drought conditions based on changes in surface water area over time.
• Validating hydrological models using satellite-derived surface water extent data.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the authoritative Copernicus Land Monitoring Service v1 Water Bodies product at 100m resolution.
• Provides monthly statistics from November 2020 onwards, enabling time-series analysis.
• Aggregated to four administrative levels (Admin 0, 1, 2, 3) for multi-scale analysis.
• Administrative boundaries are sourced from the standardized OCHA Common Operational Datasets.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Action Against Hunger ACF - Regional Office for West and Central Africa ROWCA, using Copernicus Land Monitoring Service data and OCHA boundaries.

Collection Method

Reprocessing of the Copernicus Water Bodies (WB) global product to extract surface water presence statistics.

Time Range

From November 2020 onwards.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-11 10:10:48.233915; freshness should be verified.

Geography

West and Central Africa.