The Inland Surface Water Dataset in China (ISWDC) maps the water body larger than 0.0625 km2 in the terrestrial land of China for the period 2000–2016, in 8-day temporal and 250 m spatial resolution. It is closely correlated with the national reference data with the determinant coefficients (R2) greater than 0.99 in 2000, 2005, and 2010, and possess very good consistency, very similar change dynamics, and similar spatial patterns in different regions with the GSW dataset. The ISWDC data set can be used for studies on the inter-annual and seasonal variation of the surface water systems. It can also be used as reference data for other surface water data set verification and as input parameter for regional and global hydro-climatic models.

The creation of this data set was funded by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91637209), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0405802, 2016YFC0503507-03), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA19070201). The data set will be updated continuously in the future. User feedback and suggestions are welcome to help optimize and improve the data set.