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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1866-3591</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2025-695</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Decadal surge of water-surface solar in China&apos;s Yangtze Delta: A high-fidelity SAR-optical fusion inventory (2015&amp;ndash;2024)</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yan</surname>
<given-names>Yue</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jiang</surname>
<given-names>Xin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wei</surname>
<given-names>Sihuan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jin</surname>
<given-names>Yubin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9268-1850</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zou</surname>
<given-names>Xinyu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Junwei</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Cai</surname>
<given-names>Yaotong</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5981-1786</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ye</surname>
<given-names>Jianhuai</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9063-3260</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Guo</surname>
<given-names>Zhilin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zeng</surname>
<given-names>Zhenzhong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Industrial Intelligence and Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang, P.R. China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Internatiaonl Centre of Urban Energy Nexus, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>20</day>
<month>01</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>38</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Yue Yan et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-695/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-695/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-695/essd-2025-695.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-695/essd-2025-695.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>China hosts approximately 97 % of the world&apos;s water-surface photovoltaics (WPV), with nearly two-thirds of its national capacity concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), a densely populated economic powerhouse facing intense land-energy trade-offs. Despite this dominance, no high-resolution, decade-long inventory has existed to track this rapid expansion. WPV detection using optical RS imagery is severely limited by persistent cloud cover, water surface reflections, and spectral confusion, compromising long-term consistency over aquatic environments. Here, we developed a multi-sensor fusion framework integrating all-weather Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and annual composite Sentinel-2 optical imagery. Key features include six Sentinel-2 bands, spectral indices (NDVI, MNDWI, NDBI, NDPI, and SAVI), texture metrics, and dual-polarization SAR backscatter. We trained a Random Forest classifier on 55,849 verified samples to generate annual WPV maps for 2015&amp;ndash;2024. Afterwards, we applied post-processing procedures, including noise removal, patch merging, and area thresholding, and further validated installation years and eliminated errors through manual inspection of Google Earth time-series imagery. The well-constructed dataset of the first 10 m-resolution WPV atlas for the YRD maps 401 validated projects with a cumulative area of 145.4 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; by 2024. It outperforms existing global PV inventories with an overall accuracy of 97.3 % and a Kappa coefficient of 0.94. The results reveal rapid expansion from 17.4 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; in 2015 to 145.4 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; in 2024, with 87 % deployed on natural lakes, with a marked shift in leadership from Jiangsu to Anhui, and clear spatial clustering near grid infrastructure and stable water bodies. This high-fidelity inventory provides a robust foundation for monitoring WPV evolution, assessing environmental impacts, and informing sustainable energy planning in the world&apos;s leading floating solar region.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="38"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42071022</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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