Terrestrial water bodies exist in many liquid forms including rivers, lakes, reservoirs and intermittent water bodies. As an important component of the global water cycle, they participate in cycling of matter and energy in nature. To a large extent, the spatial distribution of terrestrial water bodies can reflect the storage and utilization of surface water resources. Their variation and change in area reflect the variation and change of climate, surface processes, and the impact of human activities on the water cycle, transport of materials and ecosystems. The characteristics and change in space and time of terrestrial water bodies can deeply affect the global ecosystem, economy and the well-being of human society. There is an urgent need for the Sustainable Development Goals to have more information on the spatial and temporal variation and change of terrestrial surface water at the global scale, especially large terrestrial surface water areas.
The dataset on the spatial and temporal distribution of large terrestrial surface water areas in the world is developed from an analysis of the 8-day reflectance composite product derived from data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on board of the Terra and Aqua satellites at 500 m spatial resolution from 2001 to 2012. The large water body is determined by the area of a single water body that is no less than 25 km². Rivers, glaciers, snow covers, swamps, coastal beaches and paddy fields were not included. Several global land cover datasets, as well as reservoir and lake data products have been used as references in the production of this dataset.