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The application of agricultural ponds and small engineered impoundments (often< 0.1 km2 area) is growing globally to support livestock, irrigation, and local municipal and industrial demands during dry spells. However, evaporation diminishes the storage efficiency of these popular but often un-inventoried resources. This study provides a reliable framework for estimating global abundance of small reservoirs and associated evaporative hotspots under different climate change scenarios serving as a basis for future water management and planning. To show the applicability of the proposed method and the utility of the insights it provides, we use satellite data to identify spatio-temporal distribution of small reservoirs (~ 0.001 to 0.1 km2 area) in southern Europe (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) where irrigation heavily depends on water storage in agricultural ponds. While current estimates of evaporative water losses from …