European catchments and Rivers network system (Ecrins), lakes and reservoirs - version 1, Jun. 2012
Description
This dataset contains the “lakes” datasets of Ecrins v1.0.
Lakes are very important features of any hydrographical system and have hence been added to Ecrins. This feature is more uncertain than the other ones since it results from the processing of different sources under a twin constraint of relevance and free of charges accessibility.
The current layer comprises 70,847 lake objects, that will certainly be updated in the months to come. A lake is, as a river both a geometric and cultural object. In areas where many lakes are intertwined, the difference between one and several lakes is often that a name has been found or not or that the Corine Land cover maker has placed a limit or not.
The database comprises the following tables: feature class C_Lak with all information related to all still waterbodies which area is more than the Corine Land cover threshold, plus those identified because a reservoir or any other relevant source. This table is completed by the centroids of lakes, V_lak_Centro. The complex relationships between lakes and river segments are documented by table lakInOut where the inlet and the outlet(s) segments are reported. Complementary tables, needed by the water accounts, v_lakperadmin et v_linterfec respectively document the lake to administrative entities, with shared area and same with FECs.
Being in relation with the other components of Ecrins, lakes are versioned with respect to catchments and rivers and with their update as well.
Lake naming comes from fours sources: ERM, Eldred2, Art 13 reporting and Wikipedia.
Hydrographical information (volume, Zaverage, Zmax) and is permanently updated from three source: Eldred2, the dams database, and Wikipedia
In version 1.0, the history of lakes is not documented. Most natural lakes have a time span much before and beyond the expected duration of Ecrins. Artificial lakes, related to dams have their history documented with the dam and some natural lakes are intermittent. This last category is not documented.
Since lower limit for lake inclusion is 25 ha, all “main lakes” under the WFD acceptation are present (except if missed for any reason, the most likely being creation of an artificial reservoir not present in the latest update).
Full documentation is in EEA technical report 9/2012, downloadable from the EEA website.