Slashgeo

The useful EVS-Islands blog discuss the creation of a global land-water mask in vector format (screenshots included). From the blog: "Regular readers know that I am a long time user of World Vector Shorelines (WVS). These vectors cover the world at a scale of 1:250,000. If you download them, you will see that they are not polygons, but line files. I have always wanted to create a land-mask of all land areas within this database, but have never had the time, software or computer calculating power. That was until yesterday. [...] I let my reader know that the 1-kilometer global land-sea mask he currently was using was, probably, the best going. He knew of the Globcover LULC 300-meter grid cell version coming out in the first part of February 2008 to be created and made available by ESA. [...] Using a simple routine within the digitizing tools, I created polygons from lines." Mr. Minton's new dataset is freely available from the blog entry. The topic of world shorelines datasets was previously discussed here over a year ago.

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.

Via internal email I learned about the recent availability of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM) Global Map V.1. The highlights for the two main products: "Land Cover(GLCNMO): A GLCNMO is the data of 1km grid with 20 land cover items. The data were created by using MODIS data observed in 2003. A 16 days composite of 2003 is used for land cover classification. The classification is based on LCCS developed by FAO. Therefore, it is possible to compare and integrate GMLNMO and other land cover data products based on LCCS.

PTC (Percent Tree Cover): PTC represents the density of trees on the ground. The data show the ratio of the area covered with branches and leaves of trees (tree canopy) to the ground surface seen from the above (vertical direction). Satellite images of the whole globe at every 1km2 from the MODIS sensor of Terra were used for the data creation. As for deciduous trees, which drop all their leaves during the period of low temperature or dryness, the ratio of the most flourishing period of a year (Maximum Percent Tree Cover) was referenced as the Percent Tree Cover." Commercial use is possible. I wonder what are the incentive to using this dataset instead of the recent GlobCover LC v2.1 product. We mentioned this initiative almost two years ago. See related stories below and our Land Cover topic.

Due to a minor server problem, the daily newsletters for last Thursday were not sent. To the benefit of our hundreds of users reading Slashgeo solely via the daily newsletters, here's the recap of the stories that you missed: Google Earth Plus Discontinued, GlobCover v.2.2 and Validation Report Now Available, GDAL/OGR 1.6.0 Released, Update on Long Island Interactive Map, Ontario Traveller's Road Information Portal (MTO). Sorry for the inconvenience.