A comprehensive geospatial database of nearly 100 000 reservoirs in China

Abstract. With rapid population growth and socioeconomic development over the last century, a great number of dams/reservoirs have been constructed globally to meet various needs. China has strong economical societal demands for constructing dams reservoirs. The official statistics reported more than 98 000 in China, including nearly 40 % world's largest dams. Despite availability several global-scale dam/reservoir databases (e.g., Global Reservoir Dam database (GRanD), GlObal geOreferenced Database Dams (GOODD), Georeferenced global And Reservoirs (GeoDAR)), these insufficient coverage reservoirs especially small or newly ones. lack reservoir information impedes estimation water budgets evaluation dam impacts on hydrologic nutrient fluxes its downstream countries. Therefore, we presented Dataset (CRD), which contains 97 435 polygons fundamental attribute name storage capacity) based existing products, national basic geographic datasets, multi-source open map data, multi-level governmental yearbooks databases. compiled CRD total maximum inundation area 50 085.21 km2 capacity about 979.62 km3 (924.96–1060.59 km3). quantity decreases from southeast northwest, density hotspots mainly occur hilly regions large plains, with Yangtze River basin dominating count, area, capacity. We found that spatial accumulations are closely related China's implementation major policies. Finally, comparison GOODD, GeoDAR, GRanD significantly increased smaller 1 km2. provides comprehensive is expected benefit resources managements understanding ecological environmental across affected transboundary basins. publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6984619 (Song et al., 2022).