The GOFC-GOLD/CEOS land cover harmonization and validation initiative: Technical design and implementation framework

A global effort to assess the accuracy of existing and future land cover products derived from a variety of satellite sensors over a range of spatial resolutions is being led by the Land Cover Implementation Team (LC-IT) of GOFC/GOLD (Global Observation of Land Cover Dynamics) in conjunction with the CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Systems) Working Group on Calibration and Validation. The first phase of this effort is complete and culminated in a publication of community consensus "best practices" for validation of global land cover datasets. The next phase is to implement the recommendations outlined in the "best practices" document. A "living dat abase" of globalrandomized sample sites will form the basis of accuracy assessment for a host of global land cover products (including GLC2000, MODIS land cover, GLOBCOVER, United Nation's Forest Resource Assessment (FRA2010), and the Mid-Decadal Global Land Survey). This "living dataset" will also be a community resource available for use in validation of regional or national mapping efforts using LCCS (UN FAO's Land Cover Classification System). On the basis of what is learned about the accuracy of various existing land cover products, GOFC/GOLD will develop and update annually a "best currently available" global land cover map. Individual geographic regions may be selected from different land cover products (global, national or regional), or they may be combined in various ways. Additionally, support is requested for continued work to improve and refine LCCS as well as to establish community consensus "best practices" for accuracy assessment of land cover change.