dataset · Other
Digital Earth Africa Water Observations from Space
Water Observations from Space (WOfS) is a service that draws on satellite imagery to provide historical surface water observations of the whole African continent. WOfS allows users to understand the location and movement of inland and coastal water present in the African landscape. It shows where water is usually present; where it is seldom observed; and where inundation of the surface has been observed by satellite. They are generated using the WOfS classification algorithm on Landsat satellite
Visit source ↗Source details
Licence: DE Africa makes this data available under the Creative Commons Attribute 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Evidence quality: 22.5
Listed in aws-odr public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- surface water observations (WOfS, from Landsat satellite imagery) · scene-level WOfS data · annual WOfS summary · all-time WOfS summary
- Coverage docs-verified
- African continent
- Update frequency docs-verified
- New scene-level data is added as new Landsat data is available; summaries are published soon after a year's data is available
- Formats llm-inferred
- STAC v1.0.0 · COG
- Access docs-verified
- Free and open under CC BY 4.0; S3 access needs no AWS account (aws s3 --no-sign-request)
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Historical inundation and permanent-water frequency screening for African project sites outside the UK · Seasonal surface water presence mapping for ecological baselines in African wetlands · Multi-decade water extent change analysis for international water-resources reports
- Audience llm-inferred
- hydrologists · GIS analysts · ecologists · flood consultants working on international projects
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Coverage is the African continent only, so it does not cover UK sites · Derived from Landsat imagery, so observation density depends on Landsat acquisitions · Areas seldom observed by satellite have sparse data · Annual and all-time summaries lag scene-level data until a full year is available
Evidence
- arn:aws:s3:::deafrica-services/wofs_ls, arn:aws:s3:::deafrica-services/wofs_ls_summary_annual, arn:aws:s3:::deafrica-services/wofs_ls_summary_alltime
- https://registry.opendata.aws/deafrica-wofs/
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.