This is a visualization of the JRC Global Surface Water Mapping Layers, v1.2 (Pekel et al. 2016), which was produced from a classification algorithm that identified water occurrence between 1984 and 2019 from a collection of 4,185,439 scenes from Landsat 5, 7, and 8. The slider in this application can be used to show the extent and frequency of water occurrence globally. For example, if the slider is set to 90, it will show water that was detected more than 90% of the time (during the period of 1984-2019), which is indicative of permanent water bodies. If set to 0, it will show water that was detected more than 0% of the time, which is indicative of the maximum geographic extent of water detection, elucidating potential floods and seasonal variation.
App constructed by Dr. Brad G. Peter, Department of Geography, University of Alabama.
Pekel, J.F., Cottam, A., Gorelick, N. and Belward, A.S., 2016. High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540(7633), pp.418-422.