GlobCover - Products Description and Validation Report

The objective of this Globcover report is to describe the Globcover products and their respective validation. The objective of the ESA-Globcover project is the generation of a land cover map of the world using an automated processing chain from the 300m MERIS time series. The Globcover project carried out by an international consortium started in April 2005 and relied on very rich feedback and comments from a larger partnership including end users belonging to international institutions (JRC, FAO, EEA, UNEP, GOFC-GOLD and IGBP) in addition to ESA internal assessment. The Globcover products presented here and freely available for any non-commercial use are the following: Bimonthly MERIS Full Resolution (FR) mosaics (6 products a year, 10 products from December 2004 to June 2006). The bimonthly MERIS FR mosaic is computed every 2 months and provides, for each spectral band, the average surface reflectance calculated from all valid observations of this 2 months period. Annual MERIS FR mosaic (1 product a year). The annual MERIS FR mosaic is computed by averaging the surface reflectance values of the bimonthly products generated over one year. The Globcover Land Cover map for the period December 2004 - June 2006 (1 product). This global Land Cover map is derived by an automatic and regionally-tuned classification of a MERIS FR time series. Its 22 land cover classes are defined with the UN Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). The regional Globcover Land Cover maps for the period December 2004 - June 2006 (11 products). This set of regional land cover maps are also derived by the same automatic and regionally-tuned classification of a MERIS FR time series. However, the land cover typology has been extended to 51 possible land cover classes consistently discriminated only at the continental scale.

BICHERON Patrice;  DEFOURNY Pierre;  BROCKMANN Carsten;  SCHOUTEN Leon;  VANCUTSEM Christelle;  HUC Mireille;  BONTEMPS Sophie;  LEROY Marc;  ACHARD Frederic;  HEROLD Martin;  RANERA Frank;  ARINO Olivier; 

2009-01-30

MEDIAS-France

JRC49240