scholarly journals REVIEW OF HIGH-RESOLUTION GLOBAL LAND COVER

Author(s):  
G. Bratic ◽  
A. Vavassori ◽  
M. A. Brovelli

Abstract. The land cover detection on our planet at high spatial resolution has a key role in many scientific and operational applications, such as climate modeling, natural resources management, biodiversity studies, urbanization analyses and spatial demography. Thanks to the progresses in Remote Sensing, accurate and high-resolution land cover maps have been developed over the last years, aiming at detecting the spatial resolution of different types of surfaces. In this paper we propose a review of the high-resolution global land cover products developed through Earth Observation technologies. A series of general information regarding imagery and data used to produce the map, the procedures employed for the map development and for the map accuracy assessment have been provided for every dataset. The land cover maps described in this paper concern the global distribution of settlements (Global Urban Footprint, Global Human Settlement Built-Up, World Settlement Footprint), water (Global Surface Water), forests (Forest/Non-forest, Tree canopy cover), and a two land cover maps describing world in 10 generic classes (GlobeLand30 and Finer Resolution Observation and Monitoring of Global Land Cover). The advantages and shortcomings of these maps and of the methods employed to produce them are summarized and compared in the conclusions.

Author(s):  
M. Schultz ◽  
N. E. Tsendbazazr ◽  
M. Herold ◽  
M. Jung ◽  
P. Mayaux ◽  
...  

Many investigators use global land cover (GLC) maps for different purposes, such as an input for global climate models. The current GLC maps used for such purposes are based on different remote sensing data, methodologies and legends. Consequently, comparison of GLC maps is difficult and information about their relative utility is limited. The objective of this study is to analyse and compare the thematic accuracies of GLC maps (i.e., IGBP-DISCover, UMD, MODIS, GLC2000 and SYNMAP) at 1 km resolutions by (a) re-analysing the GLC2000 reference dataset, (b) applying a generalized GLC legend and (c) comparing their thematic accuracies at different homogeneity levels. The accuracy assessment was based on the GLC2000 reference dataset with 1253 samples that were visually interpreted. The legends of the GLC maps and the reference datasets were harmonized into 11 general land cover classes. There results show that the map accuracy estimates vary up to 10-16% depending on the homogeneity of the reference point (HRP) for all the GLC maps. An increase of the HRP resulted in higher overall accuracies but reduced accuracy confidence for the GLC maps due to less number of accountable samples. The overall accuracy of the SYNMAP was the highest at any HRP level followed by the GLC2000. The overall accuracies of the maps also varied by up to 10% depending on the definition of agreement between the reference and map categories in heterogeneous landscape. A careful consideration of heterogeneous landscape is therefore recommended for future accuracy assessments of land cover maps.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 2950
Author(s):  
Yoshie Ishii ◽  
Koki Iwao ◽  
Tsuguki Kinoshita

The Degree Confluence Project (DCP) is a volunteer-based validation dataset that comprises useful information for global land cover map validation. However, there is a problem with using DCP points as validation data for the accuracy assessment of land cover maps. While resolutions of typical global land cover maps are several hundred meters to several kilometers, DCP points can only guarantee an area of several tens of meters that can be confirmed by ground photographs. So, the objective of this study is to create a land cover map validation dataset with added spatial uniformity information using satellite images and DCP points. For this, we devised a new method to semiautomatically guarantee the spatial uniformity of DCP validation data points at any resolution. This method can judge the validation data with guaranteed uniformity with a user’s accuracy of 0.954. Furthermore, we conducted the accuracy assessment for the existing global land cover maps by the DCP validation data with guaranteed spatial uniformity and found that the trends differed by class and region.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 2589
Author(s):  
Tana Qian ◽  
Tsuguki Kinoshita ◽  
Minoru Fujii ◽  
Yuhai Bao

Global land-cover products play an important role in assisting the understanding of climate-related changes and the assessment of progress in the implementation of international initiatives for the mitigation of, and adaption to, climate change. However, concerns over the accuracies of land-cover products remain, due to the issue of validation data uncertainty. The volunteer-based Degree Confluence Project (DCP) was created in 1996, and it has been used to provide useful ground-reference information. This study aims to investigate the impact of DCP-based validation data uncertainty and the thematic issues on map accuracies. We built a reference dataset based on the DCP-interpreted dataset and applied a comparison for three existing global land-cover maps and DCP dataset-based probability maps under different classification schemes. The results of the obtained confusion matrices indicate that the uncertainty, including the number of classes and the confusion in mosaic classes, leads to a decrease in map accuracy. This paper proposes an informative classification scheme that uses a matrix structure of unaggregated land-cover and land-use classes, and has the potential to assist in the land-cover interpretation and validation processes. The findings of this study can potentially serve as a guide to select reference data and choose/define appropriate classification schemes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongke Yang ◽  
Pengfeng Xiao ◽  
Xuezhi Feng ◽  
Haixing Li

Author(s):  
K. L. Hingee

In the application of remote sensing it is common to investigate processes that generate patches of material. This is especially true when using categorical land cover or land use maps. Here we view some existing tools, landscape pattern indices (LPI), as non-parametric estimators of random closed sets (RACS). This RACS framework enables LPIs to be studied rigorously. A RACS is any random process that generates a closed set, which encompasses any processes that result in binary (two-class) land cover maps. RACS theory, and methods in the underlying field of stochastic geometry, are particularly well suited to high-resolution remote sensing where objects extend across tens of pixels, and the shapes and orientations of patches are symptomatic of underlying processes. For some LPI this field already contains variance information and border correction techniques. After introducing RACS theory we discuss the core area LPI in detail. It is closely related to the spherical contact distribution leading to conditional variants, a new version of contagion, variance information and multiple border-corrected estimators. We demonstrate some of these findings on high resolution tree canopy data.


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11877
Author(s):  
Jiyao Zhao ◽  
Le Yu ◽  
Han Liu ◽  
Huabing Huang ◽  
Jie Wang ◽  
...  

Global land-cover datasets are key sources of information for understanding the complex inter-actions between human activities and global change. They are also among the most critical variables for climate change studies. Over time, the spatial resolution of land cover maps has increased from the kilometer scale to 10-m scale. Single-type historical land cover datasets, including for forests, water, and impervious surfaces, have also been developed in recent years. In this study, we present an open and synergy framework to produce a global land cover dataset that combines supervised land cover classification and aggregation of existing multiple thematic land cover maps with the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform. On the basis of this method of classification and mosaicking, we derived a global land cover dataset for 6 years over a time span of 25 years. The overall accuracies of the six maps were around 75% and the accuracy for change area detection was over 70%. Our product also showed good similarity with the FAO and existing land cover maps.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2286
Author(s):  
Libo Wang ◽  
Paul Bartlett ◽  
Darren Pouliot ◽  
Ed Chan ◽  
Céline Lamarche ◽  
...  

Global land cover information is required to initialize land surface and Earth system models. In recent years, new land cover (LC) datasets at finer spatial resolutions have become available while those currently implemented in most models are outdated. This study assesses the applicability of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) LC product for use in the Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CLASS) through comparison with finer resolution datasets over Canada, assisted with reference sample data and a vegetation continuous field tree cover fraction dataset. The results show that in comparison with the finer resolution maps over Canada, the 300 m CCI product provides much improved LC distribution over that from the 1 km GLC2000 dataset currently used to provide initial surface conditions in CLASS. However, the CCI dataset appears to overestimate needleleaf forest cover especially in the taiga-tundra transition zone of northwestern Canada. This may have partly resulted from limited availability of clear sky MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) images used to generate the CCI classification maps due to the long snow cover season in Canada. In addition, changes based on the CCI time series are not always consistent with those from the MODIS or a Landsat-based forest cover change dataset, especially prior to 2003 when only coarse spatial resolution satellite data were available for change detection in the CCI product. It will be helpful for application in global simulations to determine whether these results also apply to other regions with similar landscapes, such as Eurasia. Nevertheless, the detailed LC classes and finer spatial resolution in the CCI dataset provide an improved reference map for use in land surface models in Canada. The results also suggest that uncertainties in the current cross-walking tables are a major source of the often large differences in the plant functional types (PFT) maps, and should be an area of focus in future work.


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