Map of standing surface waters of Flanders (northern Belgium; status 2026)

This is the dataset ‘Watervlakken - versie 2026’ (surface waters - edition 2026), a georeferenced digital file of standing surface waters in Flanders (northern Belgium). A ‘watervlak’ or surface water polygon is defined as a clearly delineated landscape feature comprising still, open water in which the aquatic aspect predominates over the terrestrial aspect for a large part of the growing season and over a period of several years. Furthermore, the function plays a role: the water polygon must be capable of fulfilling a significant ecological role.

The file contains 94 822 polygons with an area between 0.52 m² and 2.47 km² and can be considered as the most complete available representation of lentic water bodies presently available for Flanders (using the specified definition of ‘watervlak’). The map is based on topographic map layers, orthophoto images, the Digital Terrain Model of Flanders version II, results of a water probability model, information from available map layers and, to a lesser extent, field observations. 

This dataset is published by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) and distributed by 'Informatie Vlaanderen' under a CC-BY compatible license. This Zenodo record contains diverse file formats: a shape file, an ESRI FileGDB, a GeoPackage file, and a GML-file. A reading function to return the data source in a standardized way into the R environment is provided by the R-package n2khab.