Easy way to make polygon of a lake

Question

Hi. I am trying to easily create a polygon of a lake (Beaver Lake in Arkansas). I was unable to find a shapefile of strictly the water online. Can anyone suggest the easiest way to create a simple polygon of the entire lake (anything but tracing the whole shoreline)?

JayantaPoddar · Accepted Answer

I could extract it from ArcGIS Living Atlas (National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 2.1)

Spatial Reference: GCS NAD 1983

Used Copy Features tool to copy the selected feature to a shapefile.

jcarlson · Accepted Answer

I'd also like to mention a couple other alternatives.

First is OpenStreetMap. You can view the feature here: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/18Xz. The lake in OSM may well be an import from the National Hdyrography Dataset itself, but in many cases, OSM data has been refined and kept up-to-date by local mappers. Worth checking out.

You can also find OSM data prepared in full-state downloads at Geofabrik. https://download.geofabrik.de/north-america/us/arkansas.html

If you just need a basic reference, there's also Natural Earth. https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-physical-vectors/ Good for simple visualizations, and readily available in many formats.