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ASTER Global Water Bodies Database V001

Metadata Updated: June 28, 2025

The Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Water Bodies Database (ASTWBD) Version 1 data product provides global coverage of water bodies larger than 0.2 square kilometers at a spatial resolution of 1 arc second (approximately 30 meters) at the equator, along with associated elevation information. The ASTWBD data product was created in conjunction with the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER GDEM) Version 3 data product by the Sensor Information Laboratory Corporation (SILC) in Tokyo. The ASTER GDEM Version 3 data product was generated using ASTER Level 1A scenes acquired between March 1, 2000, and November 30, 2013. The ASTWBD data product was then generated to correct elevation values of water body surfaces.To generate the ASTWBD data product, water bodies were separated from land areas and then classified into three categories: ocean, river, or lake. Oceans and lakes have a flattened, constant elevation value. The effects of sea ice were manually removed from areas classified as oceans to better delineate ocean shorelines in high latitude areas. For lake water bodies, the elevation for each lake was calculated from the perimeter elevation data using the mosaic image that covers the entire area of the lake. Rivers presented a unique challenge given that their elevations gradually step down from upstream to downstream; therefore, visual inspection and other manual detection methods were required. The geographic coverage of the ASTWBD extends from 83°N to 83°S. Each tile is distributed in GeoTIFF format and referenced to the 1984 World Geodetic System (WGS84)/1996 Earth Gravitational Model (EGM96) geoid. Each data product is provided as a zipped file that contains an attribute file with the water body classification information and a DEM file, which provides elevation information in meters.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date June 28, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date June 28, 2025
Publisher LP DAAC;NASA/JPL/ASTER
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/ASTER/ASTWBD.001
Data Last Modified 2025-06-25
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id ffb631bf-dbc0-4a9a-a926-2dd74b51484c
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Old Spatial {"NorthBoundingCoordinate":82,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-83},"CARTESIAN"
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 3aee47c7ec3118e83905733a386794336ef6ef5d5ff88ce20396126034f70d24
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial

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