Abstract

Intercomparison of global landcover datasets with a focus of cropland
Track: Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Affairs
Authors: Zhe Guo

Remotely sensed data is widely used for land mapping and monitoring changes on the ground in recent three decades due to the dramatically evolvement in the technologies and methods, reduction in data cost, more importantly, increased spatial and temporal resolutions from the satellite imageries. The appearance of relatively high spatial and temporal resolution dataset poised to make a greater impact on agriculture land detection and monitoring. This article briefly described commonly used publically available land cover datasets in Africa including landcover data from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), GLC2000 (Global land cover 2000), GloBCover (2005, 2009), GLCC v2.0 (Global Land Cover Characteristics), and AfriCover. A class aggregation method has been applied to each individual dataset in order to make the classes comparable among different classification system in the landcover product. An intercomparison of global land cover datasets have been developed with a focus of agriculture land classes in East Africa.