The HydroLAKES database provides a seamless high-resolution map of the world’s
lakes and their main characteristics in support of a broad range of global-scale
assessments and analyses, with a focus on improving users’ ability to model the
important roles that lakes play in the global environment. The current version
contains the polygons for 1.5 million individual lakes.

HydroLAKES aims to be as comprehensive and consistent as possible at a global
scale and contains both freshwater and saline lakes, including the Caspian Sea,
as well as human-made reservoirs and regulated lakes. HydroLAKES achieves
virtually full completion for lakes above 35 ha in area and close to full
completion for lakes between 10 and 35 ha.

HydroLAKES  is  publicly  available  for  download  at
http://www.hydrosheds.org  and  is  free  for  scientific,  educational,  and
other  uses.  The  data  is  licensed  under  a  Creative  Commons  Attribution
4.0 International License (see section 4). By downloading and using the data
the user agrees to the terms and conditions of this license. The copyright
© of HydroLAKES is held by the authors, 2016, all rights reserved.

Citations and acknowledgements of the HydroLAKES database should be made as
follows:

Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O. (2016):
Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a
geo-statistical approach.
Nature Communications: 13603. doi: 10.1038/ncomms13603.
Data is available at www.hydrosheds.org