Slashgeo

GlobCover Version 2 Global 300m LULC Released

posted by Satri on Friday October 03, @09:51AM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the land-cover-users-rejoice dept.

An important land use land cover global dataset was released this week, the ESA's GlobCover Global LC version 2 at a spatial resolution of 300m. Amongst the highlights: "The GlobCover Land Cover product is the highest resolution (300 meters) Global Land Cover product ever produced. The GlobCover Land Cover product is based on ENVISAT MERIS data at full resolution from January 2005 to June 2006. The GlobCover Land Cover product has been developed in partnership with EEA, FAO, GOFC-GOLD, IGBP, JRC and UNEP. The GlobCover Land Cover product is labelled according to the UN Land Cover Classification System." Be careful, the product description and some webpages have not been updated yet but should be very soon. We discussed GlobCover in the past. Our Land Use topic may also be of interest.

Trackbacks:

• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE

«  Geospatial Solutions Launch a Geo-Wikipedia | US Bridge Condition Data in Google Earth  »

Related Stories

ESA's GlobCover 300m Global LULC Coverage [+]

All Points Blog links to ESA's GlobCover project which released a global land use land cover classification at 300m. From the site: "The GlobCover project has developed a service capable of delivering global composite and land cover maps using as input observations from the 300m MERIS sensor on board the ENVISAT satellite mission. The GlobCover service has been demonstrated over a period of 18 months [Januray 2005 - June 2006], for which a set of MERIS Full Resolution (FR) composites (bi-monthly and annual) and a Global Land Cover map have been produced. The GlobCover composites are the results of a set of processing made on the MERIS FR images such as cloud detection, atmospheric correction, geolocalisation and re-mapping. The GlobCover Land Cover map is compatible with the UN Land Cover Classification System (LCCS)." Yes, it's free. See also related stories below.

GlobCover Global 300m LULC Update [+]

Via AGISRS, here's two updates on the GlobCover dataset which provides free 300m-resolution land-use land-cover of global coverage. We discussed GlobCover about a year ago, the source data is not available but should be this coming July. You can browse the whole world GlobCover LULC data using the tool in the links above. From the ESA article: "Earth’s land cover has been charted from space before, but this map, which will be made available to the public upon its completion in July, has a resolution 10 times sharper than any of its predecessors. Scientists, who will use the data to plot worldwide land-cover trends, study natural and managed ecosystems and to model climate change extent and impacts, are hailing the product – generated under the ESA-initiated GlobCover project – as 'a milestone.'" See other LULC related stories below.

• educational and scientific use only

  (Score:3, Informative)

  by SEWilco (1540) on Friday October 03, @02:56PM (#2976)

  Commercial uses require approval of layout. [esa.int] Whatever that means. Credit required for other uses.

  [ Reply to This ]
• TrueMarble

  (Score:1, Interesting)

  by Anonymous Voxel on Friday October 03, @03:24PM (#2977)

  "the highest resolution [...] product ever produced"
  hmm... and what about TrueMarble? http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/land_ cover/ [unearthedoutdoors.net]
  since when is 300m better than 15m?

  [ Reply to This ]
  • Re:TrueMarble

    (Score:3, Informative)

    by Satri (3) on Friday October 03, @05:33PM (#2978)
    ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @04:07PM )

    Interesting but... TrueMarble is far from GlobCover.
    
    On the TrueMarble marble website: "These datasets are still highly experimental", this isn't the case with GlobCover.
    
    Also, TrueMarble is available at 250m for free, otherwise you must pay.
    
    And finally, the timestamp: GlobCover is based on recent MERIS data, TrueMarble is based on "GLC2000", which I assumed is based on 2000 data, but I can only assume because the website provided for GLC2000 gives a "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)", that says a lot about the underlying data...
    
    I am not related to GlobCover and have not used it (yet - will do soon), but clearly TrueMarble does not seem 'relevant' in comparison to GlobCover v2.

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    • Re:TrueMarble

      (Score:4, Informative)

      by SEWilco (1540) on Monday October 06, @11:20AM (#2980)

      I don't know what URL you had problems with, but this GLC2000 page [www-tem.jrc.it] seems to be working at the moment. However, I don't see public metadata. The Objectives page mentions GLC2000 uses the VEGA 2000 data from the SPOT-4 VEGETATION sensor. That has a resolution of 1km.

      [ Reply to This | Parent ]