Advances in Remote Sensing, 2015, 4, 196-213 Published Online September 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ars http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ars.2015.43016 A Review on Extraction of Lakes from Remotely Sensed Optical Satellite Data with a Special Focus on Cryospheric Lakes Shridhar D. Jawak1, Kamana Kulkarni2, Alvarinho J. Luis1 1Polar Remote Sensing Division, Earth System Science Organization (ESSO), National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean Research (NCAOR), Ministry of Earth Sciences, Vasco da Gama, India 2School of Electronics, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore, India Email:
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[email protected] Received 22 May 2015; accepted 20 July 2015; published 23 July 2015 Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Water on the Earth’s surface is an essential part of the hydrological cycle. Water resources include surface waters, groundwater, lakes, inland waters, rivers, coastal waters, and aquifers. Monitoring lake dynamics is critical to favor sustainable management of water resources on Earth. In cryos- phere, lake ice cover is a robust indicator of local climate variability and change. Therefore, it is necessary to review recent methods, technologies, and satellite sensors employed for the extrac- tion of lakes from satellite imagery. The present review focuses on the comprehensive evaluation of existing methods for extraction of lake or water body features from remotely sensed optical data. We summarize pixel-based, object-based, hybrid, spectral index based, target and spectral matching methods employed in extracting lake features in urban and cryospheric environments.