SWOT Prior Lake Database - Scientific

The SWOT Prior Lake Database dataset provides a global inventory of lakes and reservoirs with polygons and other useful metadata. The database provides prior data on known lakes, making it possible to link SWOT lake observations over time and to compute storage change.

It is generated by combining multiple global and regional hydrographic databases into one congruent product. The current version is mainly based on the CIRCA-2015 (Copyright UCLA) lake water extent map but relies also on several other datasets, including the SWOT Prior River Database SWORD which is therefore compatible.

The SWOT Prior Lake Database is organized into 9 so-called continents subdivided in hydrographic basins.

The present collection is the full scientific version used in SWOT Level-2 High-Rate processing chains for lake products, distributed in a SQLite format. You can find reduced and simplified version in the collections SWOT Prior Lake Database - Light and SWOT Prior Lake Database - Geometries also available on this platform.

Please see the Auxilliary Data Description Document for additional information.

If you use the SWOT Prior Lake Database in your work, please cite:
Jida Wang, Claire Pottier, Cécile Cazals, Marjorie Battude, Yongwei Sheng, Chunqiao Song, Md Safat Sikder, Xiao Yang, Linghong Ke, Manon Delhoume, Marielle Gosset, Rafael Reis Alencar Oliveira, Manuela Grippa, Félix Girard, George H. Allen, Xiangtao Xu, Xiaolin Zhu, Sylvain Biancamaria, Laurence C. Smith, Jean-François Crétaux, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, The Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission (SWOT) Prior Lake Database (PLD): Lake Mask and Operational Auxiliaries, Water Resources Research, 61,e2023WR036896, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036896

Explore a gallery of open-source tutorials and tools intended to ease the utilization of SWOT data products here.