Living Earth: Implementing national standardised land cover classification systems for Earth Observation in support of sustainable development

Owers, CJ, Lucas, RM, Clewley, D, Planque, C, Punalekar, S, Tissott, B, Chua, SMT, Bunting, P, Mueller, N and Metternicht, G 2021 Living Earth: Implementing national standardised land cover classification systems for Earth Observation in support of sustainable development. Big Earth Data. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/20964471.2021.1948179

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Abstract/Summary

Earth Observation (EO) has been recognised as a key data source for supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Advances in data availability and analytical capabilities have provided a wide range of users access to global coverage analysis-ready data (ARD). However, ARD does not provide the information required by national agencies tasked with coordinating the implementation of SDGs. Reliable, standardised, scalable mapping of land cover and its change over time and space facilitates informed decision making, providing cohesive methods for target setting and reporting of SDGs. The aim of this study was to implement a global framework for classifying land cover. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Land Cover Classification System (FAO LCCS) provides a global land cover taxonomy suitable to comprehensively support SDG target setting and reporting. We present a fully implemented FAO LCCS optimised for EO data; Living Earth, an open-source software package that can be readily applied using existing national EO infrastructure and satellite data. We resolve several semantic challenges of LCCS for consistent EO implementation, including modifications to environmental descriptors, inter-dependency within the modular-hierarchical framework, and increased flexibility associated with limited data availability. To ensure easy adoption of Living Earth for SDG reporting, we identified key environmental descriptors to provide resource allocation recommendations for generating routinely retrieved input parameters. Living Earth provides an optimal platform for global adoption of EO4SDGs ensuring a transparent methodology that allows monitoring to be standardised for all countries

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Additional Keywords:	Land cover; FAO LCCS; open data cube; sustainable development goals; environmental descriptors
Divisions:	Plymouth Marine Laboratory > National Capability categories > NERC Earth Observation Data Acquisition & Analysis Service (NEODAAS) Plymouth Marine Laboratory > Science Areas > Earth Observation Science and Applications
Depositing User:	S Hawkins
Date made live:	13 Aug 2021 14:41
Last Modified:	13 Aug 2021 14:41
URI:	https://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9304

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