Dams, Lakes and Reservoirs Database for the World Water Development Report II

The dams and reservoirs database is a global databank of 633 large impoundments from a series of world dam registers published by ICOLD and IWPDC (ICOLD, 1984;1988; IWPDC, 1994; 1989), with the following attributes: - Dam name - Year - River Nam - Nearest City - Province - Country - Continent - Dam Type - Length - Volume of dam body - Reservoir Capacity - Area - Latitude and Longitude Documented lake volumes were identified for 87 out of the total natural 6 392 georeferenced lakes with known area (ESRI 1995; Lerman et al. 1995) as developed in Green et al. (2004).

The small number of known lake volumes actually corresponds to approximately 90% of the total volume of global fresh water lakes since the largest lakes (Baikal, Tanganyika, North American Great Lakes, Victoria) are well documented. For the remaining lakes lacking documented volume information, average lake depth was estimated as a function of lake area class (ESRI 1995) depending on glacial or tectonic origin (Meybeck 1995).