100 years of lake evolution over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

This lake dataset includes the lake evolution during the past 100 years (from 1920 to 2020) over the QTP, which is defined by the boundaries from Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai province, with an area of about 200×10⁴ km². The lake mapping in 1920 is derived from early map of Republic of China, and in 1960 from the topographic map by manual digitizing. The continuous lake mappings from 1970 to 2020 are derived from Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+ and OLI images by semi-automatic water classification. All lake boundaries are visually checked combining original maps/images.

We also provide the lake dataset between the 1970s and 2020 over the TP, which is defined by the boundary above an altitude of 2500 m, with an area of about 300×10⁴ km^2.