Problems With the Shoreline Development Index—A Widely Used Metric of Lake Shape

The shoreline development index—The ratio of a lake’s shore length to the circumference circle with area—Is core metric lake morphometry used in Earth and planetary sciences. In this paper, we demonstrate that index is scale-dependent cannot be compare lakes different areas. We show large will have higher measurements than smaller same characteristic shape, even when mapped at scale. Specifically, increases by about 14% for each doubling area. These results call into question previously reported patterns shape. provide several suggestions improve application index, including bias-corrected formulation comparing surface