Page Summary
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This dataset, now superseded, provides monthly maps of surface water location and distribution globally from 1984 to 2018, alongside statistics on its extent and change.
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Generated from Landsat 5, 7, and 8 scenes, the dataset classifies each pixel as water or non-water.
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The collection contains 418 images, covering each month between March 1984 and December 2018.
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Data is provided free of charge under the Copernicus Programme, requiring proper acknowledgement and citation for use in publications, models, and data products.
- Dataset Availability
- 1984-03-16T00:00:00Z–2019-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Dataset Provider
- EC JRC / Google
- Cadence
- 1 Month
- Tags
Description
This dataset contains maps of the location and temporal distribution of surface water from 1984 to 2018 and provides statistics on the extent and change of those water surfaces. For more information see the associated journal article: High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes (Nature, 2016) and the online Data Users Guide.
These data were generated using 3,865,618 scenes from Landsat 5, 7, and 8 acquired between 16 March 1984 and 31 December 2018. Each pixel was individually classified into water / non-water using an expert system and the results were collated into a monthly history for the entire time period and two epochs (1984-1999, 2000-2018) for change detection.
This Monthly History collection holds the entire history of water detection on a month-by-month basis. The collection contains 418 images, one for each month between March 1984 and December 2018.
Bands
Pixel Size
30 meters
Bands
| Name | Pixel Size | Description | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
water |
meters | Water detection for the month. |
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Image Properties
Image Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| month | DOUBLE | Month |
| year | DOUBLE | Year |
Terms of Use
Terms of Use
All data here is produced under the Copernicus Programme and is provided free of charge, without restriction of use. For the full license information see the Copernicus Regulation.
Publications, models, and data products that make use of these datasets must include proper acknowledgement, including citing datasets and the journal article as in the following citation.
If you are using the data as a layer in a published map, please include the following attribution text: 'Source: EC JRC/Google'
Citations
Jean-Francois Pekel, Andrew Cottam, Noel Gorelick, Alan S. Belward, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature 540, 418-422 (2016). (doi:10.1038/nature20584)
Explore with Earth Engine
Code Editor (JavaScript)
var dataset = ee.ImageCollection('JRC/GSW1_1/MonthlyHistory'); var visualization = { bands: ['water'], min: 0.0, max: 2.0, palette: ['ffffff', 'fffcb8', '0905ff'] }; Map.setCenter(-121.234, 38.109, 7); Map.addLayer(dataset, visualization, 'Water');