Towards a collaborative global land cover information service

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe need and critical importance of global land cover and change information has been well recognized. Although rich collection of such information has been made available, the lack of necessary information services to support its easy access, analysis and validation makes it difficult to find, evaluate, select and reuse them through well-designed workflows. Aiming at promoting the development of the needed global land cover information services, this paper presents a conceptual framework for developing a Collaborative Global Land Cover Information Service (CoGland), followed by discussions on its implementation strategies. The framework supports connected and shared land cover and change web services around the world to address resource sharing, community service and cross-board collaboration needs. CoGland can benefit several recent international initiatives such as Future Earth, and many societal benefit areas. The paper further proposes that CoGland be developed within the framework of the Group on Earth Observations with the support of a number of key organizations such as the United Nations Expert Committee on Global Geospatial Information Management, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and International Society of Digital Earth. It is hoped that this paper can serve as a starting point for further discussions on CoGland developments.