Abstract
Abstract. The aim of this paper is to perform a preliminary analysis of the compatibility and quality of the available time series of land cover data available for continental Portugal, in particular, Climate Change Initiative Land Cover maps, which are available annually from 1992 to 2015; CORINE Land Cover and the Urban Atlas for 2006 and 2012; and the Portuguese Carta de Ocupação do Solo for 2007 and 2010. Changes were first identified per product between the different data sets for consecutive dates and then a comparison was made between products. This was followed by validation of two study areas using the COS and UA as reference products. The results show that increases in urbanization are visible in all pairs of products but that the amount of change varies. Moreover, some changes are not in the same direction but may be attributable to classes with small areas and the coarser resolution of the CCI LC maps compared to the other products. The CCI LC maps also overestimate the forest/natural vegetation class by 11–13%, which is also the largest class in Portugal.
Highlights
Land Cover (LC) is an Essential Climate Variable and an input to many applications from biodiversity monitoring to ecosystem accounting
The results show a similar behaviour for study area B, where the main difference is that Commission Errors (CE) are much larger for class 2 while Omission Errors (OE) are almost non-existent for class 3 but are much larger for all other classes except class 4, which is 100%, for the same reasons as in study area A
When the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) LC is compared with other products, there are some notable differences, which are mainly found in classes that occupy small areas
Summary
Land Cover (LC) is an Essential Climate Variable and an input to many applications from biodiversity monitoring to ecosystem accounting. LC, and to a lesser extent land use, are frequently mapped using remote sensing, often for certain points in time or for a certain year. The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) produced a global annual and consistent time series of LC maps from 1992 to 2015 (Santoro et al 2017) so that LC change over time could be monitored. The aim of this paper is to assess the quality of the available time series of land cover data available for continental Portugal, in particular, CCI LC maps, which are available annually from 1992 to 2015; CORINE Land Cover (CLC) and the Urban Atlas (UA) for 2006 and 2012; and the Portuguese Carta de Ocupação do Solo (COS) for 2010 and 2015, produced by the Portuguese National Mapping Agency. Changes were first identified between the different data sets for consecutive dates and compared, followed by validation of two study areas using COS and UA as reference products
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