Africa Platform

Total surface area of hydropower reservoirs
Higher energy demands in Africa has led to a wide expansion of the number of hydropower sites, mainly between the 1960s and 980s. The construction of dams causes impoundments of rivers and reservoirs in the region of dam influence with higher evaporation and water temperatures due to increased water surfaces. This map shows the aggregated surfaces (sqkm) of reservoirs subject to hydropower production per country, as of 2016. It includes reservoirs of associated hydropower plants with installed capacities above 5MW. Apart from this, only reservoirs with a detected dam-caused impoundment of water surface are considered.

Data provider

EC-JRC
Suggested citation

Sanchez, R. G., Seliger, R., Fahl, F., Felice, L. De, Ouarda, T. B. M. J., & Farinosi, F. (2020). Freshwater use of the energy sector in Africa. Applied Energy, 270(May), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115171
Related tool or portal

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Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Date or time period of observation

2016
Frequency of update

Not Updated
Geographic coverage

Africa
Spatial Resolution

Countries
Technical background

The surface areas (km²) of all reservoirs subject to hydropower production is aggregated for each country. Reservoir surfaces are derived from the JRC Yearly Water Classification History, v1.1 (EC JRC/Google, 2019b), which bases on the JRC Monthly Water History, v1.1 (EC JRC/Google, 2019a) derived from Landsat imagery (Pekel et al. 2016). References: * EC JRC/Google. (2019a). JRC Monthly Water History, v1.1. Retrieved October 1, 2019, from https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/JRC_GSW1_1_MonthlyHistory * EC JRC/Google. (2019b). JRC yearly water classification history, V.1.1. Retrieved October 5, 2019, from https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/JRC_GSW1_1_YearlyHistory * Pekel, J. F., Cottam, A., Gorelick, N., & Belward, A. S. (2016). High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540(7633), 418–422. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20584
Cautions

Hydropower plants with the following characteristics are considered: i) installed capacity above 5MW, ii) unambiguous identification of power plant location and iii) artificial water accumulation in reservoir associated with hydropower plant operation. Since water surfaces are derived from optical satellite imagery (Landsat), reservoir areas may be slightly underestimated when partially covered by clouds, vegetation or satellite image artefacts (Landsat).
Related SDGs and targets

GOAL 07: Affordable and clean energy, GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Related Topics

Water & Freshwater, Energy, Energy Production, Clean & Renewable Energy

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