DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6163412
title: GeoDAR: Georeferenced global Dams And Reservoirs dataset for bridging attributes and geolocations

description: Documented March 19, 2023

!!NEW!!!

GeoDAR reservoirs were registered to the drainage network! Please see the auxiliary data "GeoDAR-TopoCat" at https://zenodo.org/records/7750736. "GeoDAR-TopoCat" contains the drainage topology (reaches and upstream/downstream relationships) and catchment boundary for each reservoir in GeoDAR, based on the algorithm used for Lake-TopoCat (doi:10.5194/essd-15-3483-2023).

 

Documented April 1, 2022

Citation

Wang, J., Walter, B. A., Yao, F., Song, C., Ding, M., Maroof, A. S., Zhu, J., Fan, C., McAlister, J. M., Sikder, M. S., Sheng, Y., Allen, G. H., Crétaux, J.-F., and Wada, Y.: GeoDAR: georeferenced global dams and reservoirs database for bridging attributes and geolocations. Earth System Science Data, 14, 1869–1899, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1869-2022.

Please cite the reference above (which was fully peer-reviewed), NOT the preprint version. Thank you.

 

Contact

Dr. Jida Wang, jidawang@ksu.edu, gdbruins@ucla.edu

 

Data description and components

Data folder “GeoDAR_v10_v11” (.zip) contains two consecutive, peer-reviewed versions (v1.0 and v1.1) of the Georeferenced global Dams And Reservoirs (GeoDAR) dataset:



GeoDAR_v10_dams (in both shapefile format and the comma-separated values (csv) format): GeoDAR version 1.0, including 22,560 dam points georeferenced based on the World Register of Dams (WRD), the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD; https://www.icold-cigb.org; last access on March 13th, 2019).

GeoDAR_v11_dams (in both shapefile and csv): GeoDAR version 1.1 dam points, including 24,783 dams which harmonized GeoDAR_v10_dams and the Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD) v1.3 (Lehner et al., 2011).

GeoDAR_v11_reservoirs (in shapefile): GeoDAR version 1.1 reservoirs, including 21,515 reservoir polygons retrieved by associating GeoDAR_v11_dams with GRanD v1.3 reservoirs, HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al., 2016), and the UCLA Circa 2015 Lake Inventory (Sheng et al., 2016). The reservoir retrieval follows a one-to-one relationship between dams and reservoirs.


As by-products of GeoDAR harmonization, folder “GeoDAR_v10_v11” also contains:



GRanD_v13_issues.csv: This file contains the original records of all 7,320 dam points in GRanD v1.3, with 94 of them marked by our identified issues and suggested corrections. These 94 records are placed at the beginning of this table. They include 89 records showing possible georeferencing and/or attribute errors, and another 5 records documented as subsumed or replaced. Our added fields start from column BG and include:



“Issue”: main issue(s) of this record

“Description”: more detailed explanation of the issue

“Lat_corrected”: suggested correction for latitude (if any) in decimal degree

“Lon_corrected”: suggested correction for longitude (if any) in decimal degree

“Correction_source”: correction source(s)

“Harmonized”: whether this GRanD dam was harmonized in GeoDAR v1.1 and the reason.



Wada_et_al_2017_harmonized.csv: This csv file contains the original records of all 139 georeferenced large dams/reservoirs in Wada et al. (2017; doi:10.1007/s10712-016-9399-6), with our revised storage capacities and spatial coordinates for data harmonization. Our added fields start from column E and include:



Revised_capacity_km3: Our revised reservoir storage capacity in cubic kilometers used for harmonization

Revised_lat: Revised latitude in decimal degree

Revised_lon: Revised longitude in decimal degree

Verification_notes: Description of the issues, verification sources, and other information used for harmonization.




 

Attribute description






Attribute



Description and values





v1.0 dams (file name: GeoDAR_v10_dams; format: comma-separated values (csv) and point shapefile)





id_v10



Dam ID for GeoDAR version 1.0 (type: integer). Note this is not the same as the International Code in ICOLD WRD but is linked to the International Code via encryption.





lat



Latitude of the dam point in decimal degree (type: float) based on datum World Geodetic System (WGS) 1984.





lon 



Longitude of the dam point in decimal degree (type: float) on WGS 1984.





geo_mtd



Georeferencing method (type: text). Unique values include “geo-matching CanVec”, “geo-matching LRD”, “geo-matching MARS”, “geo-matching NID”, “geo-matching ODC”, “geo-matching ODM”, “geo-matching RSB”, “geocoding (Google Maps)”, and “Wada et al. (2017)”. Refer to Table 2 in Wang et al. (2022) for abbreviations.





qa_rank



Quality assurance (QA) ranking (type: text). Unique values include “M1”, “M2”, “M3”, “C1”, “C2”, “C3”, “C4”, and “C5”. The QA ranking provides a general measure for our georeferencing quality. Refer to Supplementary Tables S1 and S3 in Wang et al. (2022) for more explanation.





rv_mcm



Reservoir storage capacity in million cubic meters (type: float). Values are only available for large dams in Wada et al. (2017). Capacity values of other WRD records are not released due to ICOLD’s proprietary restriction. Also see Table S4 in Wang et al. (2022).





val_scn



Validation result (type: text). Unique values include “correct”, “register”, “mismatch”, “misplacement”, and “Google Maps”. Refer to Table 4 in Wang et al. (2022) for explanation.





val_src



Primary validation source (type: text). Values include “CanVec”, “Google Maps”, “JDF”, “LRD”, “MARS”, “NID”, “NPCGIS”, “NRLD”, “ODC”, “ODM”, “RSB”, and “Wada et al. (2017)”. Refer to Table 2 in Wang et al. (2022) for abbreviations.





qc



Roles and name initials of co-authors/participants during data quality control (QC) and validation. Name initials are given to each assigned dam or region and are listed generally in chronological order for each role. Collation and harmonization of large dams in Wada et al. (2017) (see Table S4 in Wang et al. (2022)) were performed by JW, and this information is not repeated in the qc attribute for a reduced file size. Although we tried to track the name initials thoroughly, the lists may not be always exhaustive, and other undocumented adjustments and corrections were most likely performed by JW.





v1.1 dams (file name: GeoDAR_v11_dams; format: comma-separated values (csv) and point shapefile)





id_v11



Dam ID for GeoDAR version 1.1 (type: integer). Note this is not the same as the International Code in ICOLD WRD but is linked to the International Code via encryption.





id_v10



v1.0 ID of this dam/reservoir (as in id_v10) if it is also included in v1.0 (type: integer).





id_grd_v13



GRanD ID of this dam if also included in GRanD v1.3 (type: integer).





lat



Latitude of the dam point in decimal degree (type: float) on WGS 1984. Value may be different from that in v1.0.





lon 



Longitude of the dam point in decimal degree (type: float) on WGS 1984. Value may be different from that in v1.0.





geo_mtd



Same as the value of geo_mtd in v1.0 if this dam is included in v1.0.





qa_rank



Same as the value of qa_rank in v1.0 if this dam is included in v1.0.





val_scn



Same as the value of val_scn in v1.0 if this dam is included in v1.0.





val_src



Same as the value of val_src in v1.0 if this dam is included in v1.0.





rv_mcm_v10



Same as the value of rv_mcm in v1.0 if this dam is included in v1.0.





rv_mcm_v11



Reservoir storage capacity in million cubic meters (type: float). Due to ICOLD’s proprietary restriction, provided values are limited to dams in Wada et al. (2017) and GRanD v1.3. If a dam is in both Wada et al. (2017) and GRanD v1.3, the value from the latter (if valid) takes precedence.





har_src



Source(s) to harmonize the dam points. Unique values include “GeoDAR v1.0 alone”, “GRanD v1.3 and GeoDAR 1.0”, “GRanD v1.3 and other ICOLD”, and “GRanD v1.3 alone”. Refer to Table 1 in Wang et al. (2022) for more details.





pnt_src



Source(s) of the dam point spatial coordinates. Unique values include “GeoDAR v1.0”, “original GRanD”, “adjusted GRanD” (meaning the original dam point location in GRanD has been adjusted to improve the accuracy), and “corrected GRanD” (meaning the original point in GRanD was misplaced and has been corrected). Also see Table S5 in Wang et al. (2022).





qc



Roles and name initials of co-authors/participants during data QC, validation, and other manual operations. Name initials are given to each assigned dam or region and are listed generally in chronological order for each role. Correction of GRanD (see Table S5 in Wang et al. (2022)) and reservoir polygon QC were performed by JW, and this information is not repeated in the qc attribute to reduce the file size. Although we tried to track the name initials thoroughly, the lists may not be always exhaustive, and other undocumented adjustments and corrections were most likely performed by JW.





v1.1 reservoirs (file name: GeoDAR_v11_reservoirs; format: polygon shapefile)





plg_src



Source of the retrieved reservoir polygon (type: text). Unique values include “GRanD v1.3”, “HydroLAKES v1.0”, and “UCLA Circa 2015”. Refer to Table 1 in Wang et al. (2022) for more details.





plg_a_km2



Area of the retrieved reservoir polygon in square kilometres (calculated based on the cylindrical equal area projection on datum WGS 1984).





All other attributes in v1.1 dams.





 

Data and code availability

GeoDAR v1.0 (dam points) and v1.1 (both dam points and reservoir polygons) are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). 

Any user who would like to link GeoDAR features to the proprietary WRD attributes the user has purchased in advance from ICOLD should contact the corresponding author JW.

Python scripts for geo-matching, geocoding, and reservoir assignment are available at https://github.com/surf-hydro/georeferencing-ICOLD-dams-and-reservoirs. We request users who adapt or use the scripts to cite Wang et al. (2022).

We also request users to cite Wang et al. (2022) if they use our identified issues or suggested corrections for GRanD v1.3 (as provided in “GRanD_v13_issues.csv”).

 

Disclaimer

GeoDAR v1.0 and v1.1 contain knowledge derived from ICOLD WRD (https://www.icold-cigb.org/GB/world_register/acknowledgements_wrd.asp) but release no original values of the proprietary WRD attributes (except the storage capacities of a few large dams used to verify/correct Wada et al. (2017); see Table S4 in Wang et al. (2022)). The production and dissemination of GeoDAR abide by ICOLD’s legal policies (https://www.icold-cigb.org/GB/legal.asp) and were approved by ICOLD’s Central Office.

GeoDAR v1.0 represents an initial effort of georeferencing WRD at the global scale. The resultant dam distribution may be skewed towards regions where georeferencing sources are more abundant, and therefore, may not accurately reflect the distribution of all WRD records. The authors are not responsible for any consequence arising from this limitation.

GeoDAR v1.1 absorbed most of the spatial features (i.e., dam point coordinates and reservoir polygons) in GRanD v1.3. To acknowledge the originality of GRanD, we request users to cite Lehner et al. (2011) if they only use the subset of GeoDAR v1.1 from GRanD alone. If the user adopts the spatial coordinates we corrected for GRanD (see “GRanD_v13_issues.csv”), we recommend users citing Wang et al. (2022) as well.

The source of each spatial feature in GeoDAR v1.1 is specified in the attributes “har_src” and “pnt_src” for dam points and the attribute “plg_src” for reservoir polygons. For any questions about data citation, please contact the corresponding author JW.

Authors of this paper claim no responsibility or liability for any consequences related to the use, citation, or dissemination of GeoDAR.

 

Other notes

We provide another auxiliary folder “GeoDAR_beta_peer_review” (.zip), which stores the versions of GeoDAR before the completion of peer review with ESSD. We here keep these earlier GeoDAR versions on file, but since improvements and corrections were made during the peer review process, we do NOT recommend any application of these earlier versions. Instead, please use the fully peer-reviewed versions in folder “GeoDAR_v10_v11”. 

Please also see the readme files in each of the folders. 
description: The work was in part supported by NASA Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Grant (#80NSSC20K1143).