Land Cover

Aerial view of a rural landscape with a village surrounded by forests and fields, next to a banner for the Global Climate Observing System, highlighting a Land Cover factsheet.

Land cover is the observed (bio)-physical cover on the Earth’s surface. It influences climate by modifying water and energy exchanges with the atmosphere and by changing greenhouse gas and aerosol sources and sinks. Land-cover conditions are inherently dynamic (i.e. seasonality) and distributions are linked to regional climatic conditions, so changes in cover can be due to climate change on a regional scale as well as directly due to human activities.

Global Land Cover

Figure: Global land cover data for the year 2015 (http://www.esa-landcover-cci.org/)

Legend and interactive map under: http://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/CCI/viewer/index.php

ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Land Cover.

Products			Land Cover	Maps of High-Resolution Land Cover		Maps of Key IPCC Land Classes, Related Changes and Land Management Types
	*()**	Unit	Values	Values	Unit	Values
Horizontal Resolution	G	m	100-300	<10	m/degree	10-300
	B		300-1 km	10-30		300-1000
	T		>1 km	30-100		1000 - 1 degree
Vertical Resolution	G		-	-		-
	B		-	-		-
	T		-	-		-
Temporal Resolution	G	month	1	1	month	1
	B		12	12		12
	T		60	60		60
Timeliness	G	month	3	3	month	1
	B		12	12		12
	T		60	60		60
Temporal Extent (Time span)	G	Y	>50	30-50	Y	>100
	B		10-50	10-30		50
	T		0 (one time only)	0 (one time only)		30
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma)	G	% for accuracy and errors of omission and commission and hectares for area estimates incl. 95 % confidence intervals	5	5	% for accuracy and errors of omission and commission and hectares for area estimates incl. 95 % confidence intervals	5
	B		20	20		15
	T		35	35		25
Stability	G	% incl. 95 % confidence intervals	5	5	% incl. 95 % confidence intervals	5
	B		15	15		15
	T		25	25		25

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful.

Data sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the abombelliwmo [dot] int (GCOS Secretariat).

ESA-CCI Land Cover data
MODIS global land cover data
Copernicus Global Land Monitoring Service
GOFC-GOLD
CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation Land Product Validation Subgroup
Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)

Domain:

Land

Subdomain:

Biology

Scientific Area:

Biosphere

ECV Steward:

Matieu Henry

Products:

Land cover; Maps of High-Resolution Land Cover; Maps of Key IPCC Land Classes, Related Changes and Land Management Types