The change in lake water storage capacity is a unique indicator of natural climate change in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau (TP). However, the region still lacks comprehensive lake water storage data, especially for lakes smaller than 10 square kilometers. In this dataset, we utilized Landsat imagery and digital terrain models to conduct an annual relative lake volume (RLV) survey of 976 lakes with an area greater than 1 square kilometer in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau Internal Flow Basin (EBTP) from 1989 to 2019. Our method first identifies individual lakes, determines their analysis range, and calculates the annual lake area based on land remote sensing satellite images. Then derive the relationship between lake area and altitude, estimate the lake surface altitude, and calculate RLV. After verification and comparison with several existing datasets, it was found that our data is more reliable and comprehensive. Our research provides complete long-term lake water volume change data for the region, which is a supplement to the existing lake dataset.
The data used in this study includes land satellite images, global surface water data from the Joint Research Center, digital elevation models (DEM) from the Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), advanced land observation satellites (ALOS) digital surface models (DSM), and some public lake storage data. The spatial resolution of ALOS and SRTM is both 30 meters, covering the study area.
In this study, the calculation of relative lake volume (RLV) was divided into two steps. The first step is to identify individual lakes, determine their analysis range, and calculate the annual lake area based on land remote sensing satellite images. The second step is to derive the relationship between lake area and altitude, estimate the elevation of the lake surface, and calculate the changes in lake water volume. The specific steps of the first step include three sub steps: lake identification, lake analysis scope and seed determination, water area classification and segmentation, and annual lake area calculation. The second step can be divided into deriving the lake area elevation relationship and calculating the lake RLV.
The data quality is good.
This work is licensed under a
Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
CSTR:11738.11.NCDC.ZENODO.DB4055.2023
10.5281/zenodo.5543614