The global abundance and size distribution of lakes, ponds, and impoundments

One of the major impediments to the integration of lentic ecosystems into global environmental analyses has been fragmentary data on the extent and size distribution of lakes, ponds, and impoundments. We use new data sources, enhanced spatial resolution, and new analytical approaches to provide new estimates of the global abundance of surface-water bodies. A global model based on the Pareto distribution shows that the global extent of natural lakes is twice as large as previously known (304 million lakes; 4.2 million km2 in area) and is dominated in area by millions of water bodies smaller than 1 km2. Similar analyses of impoundments based on inventories of large, engineered dams show that impounded waters…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UO
  University of California, Santa Barbara