PO.DAAC Cookbook - SWOT Hydrology Data Access
Open documentation and worked tutorials for discovering and downloading NASA/CNES SWOT surface-water hydrology products (river vector, lake vector, raster, pixel cloud) from the Earthdata Cloud, including SWODLR on-demand raster generation.
podaac.github.io
At a glance
- Region
- United States (Global)
- Coverage
- Global
- Access
- Free
- Category
- Space Agency
- Last updated
- 2026
What's inside
- SWOT
- surface water
- rivers
- lakes
- raster
What you can do with it
Typical work that data of this type supports.
- 01
Storage tracking
Follow storage and releases through the season.
Because it has: surface water
- 02
Change over time
See how lakes and wetlands have grown or shrunk.
- 03
Design flows
Estimate 1-in-50 and 1-in-100 year floods for bridges, culverts and spillways.
Where AI adds value
Ideas for machine learning and AI agents built on this kind of data.
- 01
Storage from space
Estimate volume from satellite water area and altimetry.
- 02
Release decisions
Optimise releases against inflow forecasts.
- 03
Flow forecasting
Train LSTM-style models on past records to forecast river levels and flow days ahead.
Related water data
- USGS WISP - What is SWOT (Surface Water Mission Portal)Global | Free
- Theia / Data Terra Catalogue - Hydroweb Operational Altimetry River & Lake Water LevelGlobal | Free
- Hydrocron API - SWOT River & Lake Time Series (PO.DAAC)Global | Free
- Hydroweb LEGOS - Satellite Altimetry Water Levels of Rivers and LakesGlobal | Free
- McGill Global HydroLAB: GLWDGlobal | Free
- Natural Earth Water VectorsGlobal | Free
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