ASTER Global Water Bodies Database NetCDF V001

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated September 10, 2025, 22:59 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 14:35 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 72196707-f341-4b9b-af01-ba4d3bca304e
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/ASTER/ASTWBD_NC.001
landingPage https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTWBD_NC.001
modified 2025-09-10
programCode {026:000}
publisher LP DAAC;NASA/JPL/ASTER
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash c82674a9b6c524e7c2db746c1828a9ff31b87f869ed6f98dd4d6acba61a78c1e
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial [[{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":82,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-83}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal 2000-03-01/2000-03-01
theme {"Earth Science"}