Named lakes of a country

Water bodies are areas tagged natural=water, with water=lake for lakes. Big lakes are multipolygon relations made of many ways, so search ways and relations (wr).

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
area["ISO3166-1"="CH"][admin_level=2]->.ch;
wr["natural"="water"]["water"="lake"]["name"](area.ch);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. wr searches ways and relations; lakes are never single nodes.
2. ["name"] keeps only named lakes, which drops thousands of ponds.
3. out geom; returns relation members with coordinates; join the outer rings to draw them.

Variations

• Reservoirs: ["water"="reservoir"].
• Just names and areas without geometry: out tags center;.
• The water level of each lake: lakes and their surface elevation.

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.