A dataset of the Poyang Lake coastlines in dry and wet seasons during 2000–2020

Located in the south of Jiangxi Province, Poyang Lake is China’s largest freshwater lake directly connected to the Yangtze River. In the wet seasons, the water area of the lake can reach more than 3000 km2 and in the dry seasons, it can drop to lower than 800 km2. As one of the important lakes in the mainstream of Yangtze River, it plays an important role in flood storage, biodiversity protection and the economic development of the watershed. Based on high-frequency MODIS data, we obtained series of Poyang Lake coastlines in wet and dry seasons during 2000–2020. When compared with two visual interpretation results in wet and dry seasons, the overall accuracy of this dataset is higher than 85%. This dataset can delineate the tempo-spatial dynamics of the lake inundations and can serve as scientific data for the research on ecological protection and water resource management in the watershed of Poyang Lake.