Articles | Volume 18, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-231-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-231-2026
Data description paper
 | 
09 Jan 2026
Data description paper |  | 09 Jan 2026

Improved land mask for satellite remote sensing of oceans and inland waters

Karlis Mikelsons and Menghua Wang

Cited articles

Abd Ellah, R. G.: Morphometric analysis of Toshka Lakes in Egypt: A succinct review of geographic information systems & remote sensing based techniques, Egypt. J. Aquat. Res., 47, 215–221, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejar.2021.05.005, 2021. 
Allen, G. H. and Pavelsky, T. M.: Global extent of rivers and streams, Science, 361, 585–588, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat0636, 2018. 
Bulgarelli, B., Kiselev, V., and Zibordi, G.: Adjacency effects in satellite radiometric products from coastal waters: a theoretical analysis for the northern Adriatic Sea, Appl. Optics, 56, 854–869, https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.56.000854, 2017. 
Byrne, A., Norris, K., Chadwick, M. A., Avery, S., Olaka, L., and Tebbs, E. J.: Rising lake levels in central East Africa are driven by increasing rainfall and land-use intensification, J. Hydrol.: Reg. Stud., 56, 101999, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2024.101999, 2024. 
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Short summary
This work provides an improved medium resolution (~ 250 m) global land/water mask derived from an earlier data set (https://doi.org/10.17632/9r93m9s7cw.1), and includes the recent changes in the environment, as well as fixes some artifacts in the earlier data set. It highlights the use of global medium resolution clear sky true and false color imagery to detect changes in global surface water coverage, and helps to improve satellite water color retrievals in many new and recent water bodies.
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