Satellite Inventory of Land Use Underway
Database would track land cover and uses worldwide.
Compiled by staff
Published: Nov 8, 2010
At the GEO VII Ministerial Summit in Beijing, last week. U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes announced the United States is launching a new global initiative aimed at developing the first-ever comprehensive and up-to-date database of 30-meter satellite imagery that will show changes in land cover and land uses worldwide. Hayes told the delegates from 85 countries and the European Commission that this type of sharing of data and technology can help us make wise decisions about how best to build a sustainable future, protect our environment, and tackle challenges like pollution and climate change.
The first set of products will describe the Earth's land cover conditions as of 2010, and will include: a global land-cover characteristics baseline focusing on the percent of tree, shrub, herbaceous, surface water and wetness, snow/ice, or barren land-cover; and a global map of land-cover and land-use types such as urban and built-up areas, agriculture, forests, grasslands, shrublands, water bodies, wetlands, snow and ice, and barren areas. It is envisioned the land-cover characteristics product will be updated annually and the land-cover-type map every five years.
The proposed initiative is based on the fact that higher-resolution, or 30-meter, global land cover datasets would permit detection of land change at the scale of most human activity where change most commonly occurs and would increase flexibility in environmental modeling. The higher resolution is particularly important for studies of ecosystem fragmentation and degradation and ultimately will improve the comparability of assessments conducted across the globe.
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