The management and conservation of lakes should be conducted in the context of catchments because lakes collect water and materials from their upstream catchments. This study constructed the first dataset of lake-catchment characteristics for 1525 lakes with an area from 0.2 to 4503 km² on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which provides exciting opportunities for lake studies in a spatially explicit context and promotes the development of landscape limnology on the TP.