Drowning In Data, but Slaking the Thirst for Land Use Information

More people in more countries have access to data from global land-cover observing satellites over a greater range of spatial resolutions than ever before. At the last count 34 sovereign states have successfully flown such missions. Collectively they have launched more than 200 land-observing satellites over the last four decades, and half of these are still imaging. International cooperation brings benefits; more frequent imaging, shared experience of data handling and analytical techniques, improved and mutually accepted measurements and shared knowledge concerning the land on a global scale. In 2014 the European Union launched the first of six ‘Sentinel’ missions underpinning the EU’s Earth Observing Program, Copernicus. In 2015 Sentinel-2 will be launched. The Copernicus program’s ‘full and open’ data policy assures the imagery can be used by all nations. The data are also linked to applications projects, including the Global Land Service; land cover change, the status of protected areas and indices such as land productivity dynamics and global surface water occurrence are among the variables produced. This paper provides an overview of the Copernicus program, its global land service and how to access the information it provides

BELWARD Alan; 

2016-01-13

World Bank

JRC99700

https://www.conftool.com/landandpoverty2015/index.php/Belward-697-697_paper.pdf?page=downloadPaper&filename=Belward-697-697_paper.pdf&form_id=697,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC99700,