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Digital Earth Africa has launched its Water Quality Monitoring Service (WQMS), a new continental-scale service delivering harmonised, satellite-derived water quality information for Africa’s lakes, dams and reservoirs.
The Water Quality Monitoring Service expands DE Africa’s operational suite of services by transforming Earth observation data into decision-ready insights on the condition of surface water bodies across the continent.
Building on the Waterbodies Monitoring Service, which maps the extent and dynamics of more than 700,000 water bodies, the Water Quality Monitoring Service advances the platform from identifying where water is, to understanding what condition it is in.
The service delivers harmonised, continental-scale datasets describing key water quality indicators, including water surface temperature, water colour (hue), optical water type, floating algae (indicating algal blooms), trophic state (generalised chlorophyll-a levels), and turbidity.
Using a sensor-agnostic approach that integrates multiple satellite missions and published water quality algorithms, the service maximises data availability while ensuring continuity and consistency through time.
The Water Quality Monitoring Service is being developed through three progressive phases: annual continental mapping, time-series monitoring to assess state, trends and change, and the development of configurable alert functionality to notify users when defined water quality thresholds are exceeded for specific water bodies.
The annual mapping product on release provides water quality characterisation for water bodies across Africa from 2000 to 2025 at 10 metre spatial resolution, establishing a multi-decadal baseline for understanding long-term water quality conditions.
The service directly supports national reporting against Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 6.6.1, which tracks changes in water-related ecosystems over time, and provides transparent, higher-resolution approaches that can be adapted to national contexts.
The Water Quality Monitoring Service is designed to support water resource management authorities, environmental monitoring agencies, and government departments across Africa, while also informing agriculture, pastoral systems and public health policy where water quality conditions are critical.
“Africa’s freshwater systems are under increasing pressure from climate variability, land use change and pollution. With the launch of the Water Quality Monitoring Service, we are providing a standardized long-term and regularly updated dataset across the entire continent, moving from fragmented monitoring to open, operational water intelligence.” Dr Lisa-Maria Rebelo, Managing Director, Digital Earth Africa.
Water quality is a fundamental indicator of ecosystem health and sustainable land and water management practices. In extreme cases, harmful algal blooms and cyanobacteria can pose direct risks to human and animal health.
With this launch, Digital Earth Africa strengthens the continent’s capacity to monitor freshwater ecosystems at scale, enabling governments and institutions to shift from reactive responses to proactive, evidence-based water management.