Res-CN (Reservoir dataset in China): hydrometeorological time series and landscape attributes across 3254 Chinese reservoirs

Dams and reservoirs are human-made infrastructures that have attracted increasing attention because of their societal and environmental significance. Towards better management and conservation of reservoirs, a dataset of reservoir-catchment characteristics is needed, considering that the amount of water and material flowing into and out of reservoirs depends on their locations on the river network and the properties of the upstream catchment. To date, no dataset exists for reservoir-catchment characteristics. The aim of this study is to develop the first database featuring reservoir-catchment characteristics for 3254 reservoirs with storage capacity totaling 682 595 km3 (73.2 % of reservoir water storage capacity in China) to support the management and conservation of reservoirs in the context of catchment level. To ensure a more representative and accurate mapping of local variables of large reservoirs, reservoir catchments are delineated into full catchments (their full upstream contributing areas) and intermediate catchments (subtracting the area contributed by upstream reservoirs from the full upstream part of the current reservoir). Using both full catchments and intermediate catchments, characteristics of reservoir catchments were extracted, with a total of 512 attributes in six categories (i.e., reservoir and catchment body characteristics, topography, climate, soil and geology, land cover and use, and anthropogenic activity characteristics). Besides these static attributes, time series of 15 meteorological variables of catchments were extracted to support hydrological simulations for a better understanding of drivers of reservoir environment change. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive and extensive reservoir dataset on water level (data available for 20 % of 3254 reservoirs), water surface area (99 %), storage anomaly (92 %), and evaporation (98 %) from multisource satellites such as radar and laser altimeters and images from Landsat and Sentinel