Small Water Bodies describes the state of small ponds in dry regions. The Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit of JRC has developed a method to map and monitor small water bodies in arid regions using low resolution satellite imagery from the VEGETATION instrument. Although this instrument provides images of the Earth with a 1-km resolution, it was demonstrated that it is sufficient to accurately map and monitor the presence of water in natural and artificial ponds and swamps of about 1 km² in size. The accuracy obtained is in the order of 90%, i. e. 90% of the water bodies detected with the method over an area of 1 million 1 km² were found to be correct.

Water is available in limited quantities in arid and semi-arid regions. Monitoring surface water scattered in small water bodies provide useful information for several applications, including human activities, cattle management, epidemiology, biodiversity (incl. migrating birds). In addition long term times series of water occurrence in semi arid regions might be an interesting indicator of the impact of climate variation.