Figure 5: Comparison of the total number of global lakes between previous estimates and this study.
From: Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach
Lake numbers are shown by logarithmic size class for lakes with a surface area of at least 10 ha. The asterisk (*) indicates that the numbers were extrapolated from canonical data sets with log–log regressions between the number of lakes and their surface area (as shown in Fig. 3). The number of lakes over 10 km2 for Lehner and Döll70 and Downing et al.31 are both obtained from the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD)70. All data refer to natural lakes except Verpoorter et al.38 which include reservoirs.
