How much is left of Lake Assad and Syria's other lakes in summer 2025?
437 water bodies with the boundary of their maximum extent since 1984, permanent water and the 2021 area, and for the 87 largest lakes the August–September 2025 area and the share of maximum extent remaining — plus 30 m water-occurrence cells for 1984–2021.
In short
420 lakes and reservoirs and 17 river-channel segments.
In summer 2025, 48.6% of the measured lakes' maximum extent remained.
The largest bodies are listed in the table.
Who it is for
Water-resources and irrigation engineers, WASH organisations, and journalists and researchers covering the Euphrates crisis and drought.
Method: what we add to the raw data
- Water bodies were extracted from 1984–2021 water-occurrence cells (30 m): every cell where water was ever seen, dropping bodies under 0.1 km².
- Each body's permanent water (≥75% occurrence) and 2021 area were computed using each cell's true area.
- The August–September 2025 area for bodies of 1 km² or more was computed from cloud-free Sentinel-2 images with the modified normalised difference water index (MNDWI), after placing every image covering the body on one 20 m grid and taking the per-cell median.
- Each body was classified by shape: elongated narrow bodies are river channels, the rest lakes or reservoirs.
- Bodies were named from known dams and lakes within 3 km; unnamed ones take the nearest community.
Product details
| What you get | 1 spatial layer in GeoPackage, 1 GeoTIFF raster, 1 CSV table, lyrx and qml symbology for ArcGIS Pro and QGIS, a PNG map at 220 dpi, and an Arabic and English guide |
|---|---|
| Formats | GPKG, GeoTIFF, CSV, lyrx, qml, PNG |
| Coordinate system | WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) |
| Licence | Commercial use allowed for you and the organisation you buy for; no resale or redistribution |
| Delivery | A private download link valid for 24 hours, within 6 hours of payment confirmation |
| Package size | ZIP 2.9 MB |
| Personal data | The product contains no personal data |
Spatial layers
water_bodies_max_extent— polygons, 437: Water bodies at maximum extent with areas
Raster files (GeoTIFF)
D084_water_occurrence_1984_2021.tif— 27,084 × 20,011, 30 m: Water occurrence 1984–2021
Tables
D084_water_bodies.csv— 437 rows: Water body table
Limitations
- Maximum extent includes land flooded once in a flood or exceptional season.
- 2025 area is for the dry season only. River channels, bodies under 1 km², and those less than 95% covered by clear images, have no 2025 value.
- River-channel classification is an approximate shape rule; a narrow reservoir may be classed as a channel.
- Names based on the nearest community are descriptive, not official.
FAQ
- How long does delivery take?
- Up to 6 hours after payment is confirmed.
- How long does the download link last?
- 24 hours, and it is renewed free on request.
- Can I get a refund?
- Digital products are not refundable once downloaded — unless the file is defective or does not match the description, in which case it is replaced or fully refunded.
- What does the licence allow?
- Commercial use is allowed for you and the organisation you buy for; resale or redistribution is not.