Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

MODIS/Terra Land Water Mask Derived from MODIS and SRTM L3 Global 250m SIN Grid V006

Metadata Updated: August 29, 2025

The MOD44W Version 6 data product was decommissioned on July 18, 2024. Users are encouraged to use the MOD44W Version 6.1 data product (https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD44W.061).The Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Land Water Mask (MOD44W) Version 6 data product provides a global map of surface water at 250 meter (m) spatial resolution. The data are available annually from 2000 to 2015. MOD44W Version 6 is derived using a decision tree classifier trained with MODIS data and validated with the Version 5 MOD44W data product. A series of masks are applied to address known issues caused by terrain shadow, burn scars, cloudiness, or ice cover in oceans. A primary improvement in Version 6 is the generation of time series data rather than a simple static representation of water, given that water bodies fluctuate in size and location over time due to both natural and anthropogenic causes. Provided in each MOD44W Version 6 Hierarchical Data Format 4 (HDF4) file are layers for land, water, no data, and an associated per pixel quality assurance (QA) layer that provides users with information on the determination of water. Known Issues The mask area for pixels outside of the Sinusoidal Grid for tile h27v14 should be labeled as 250 (Outside of Projection) instead of 0 (Land) and the QA values should be 10 (Fill) instead of 3 (Lower confidence land) for years 2000 through 2015. Additional known issues are described in the User Guide and ATBD. For complete information about known issues please refer to the MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website.Improvements/Changes from Previous Versions Corrected for errors of many misplaced rivers in South America due to limited spatial resolution of previously used input data. Improved data in the far northern latitudes. Water extent provided as a time series that can be used to detect changes between 2000 and 2015. Increased spatial resolution of 250 m. The Version 5 product was 500 m. Improved terrain shadows with slope and elevation masking.* Burned areas (scars) delineated.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 29, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 29, 2025
Publisher LP DAAC;NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/TISL/MODAPS
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/MODIS/MOD44W.006
Data Last Modified 2025-08-28
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 5e857eec-b17d-478f-bd0c-b4547e5c1bed
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a1e416b244ea7d77657d5bad3e9e8b1477165b0feead78dc024e5131a1864252
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2000-01-01/2000-01-01

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.