National high-resolution land cover and land use information system

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the last few years, the Spanish Land Cover and Land Use Information System (SIOSE) is undergoing a methodological and productive evolution focused on achieving a high level of geometric, thematic, and temporal detail. This methodological advance is based on the reuse and integration of official reference information on land cover and land use, such as cadastre (1:500–1:5000), agricultural identification systems (1:5000), forest maps (1:25,000), or LiDAR data (0.5 p/m2). This article presents the work carried out by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (Spanish National Geographic Institute), in coordination with the rest of the project partners, in the generation of a high-resolution SIOSE by automatic data integration and visual review. To carry out the latter, an online framework has been designed to facilitate the access to data and to guide reviewers in editing. Resulting integrated data offers a detailed description for all thematic domains on land cover and land use never seen before in Spain at the National level and advances in the land management on many application fields. High-resolution SIOSE provides information at 1:5000 for the majority of classes and ensures a complete thematic content with more than 140 classes structured in an object-oriented information system.