The objective of the GLOBCOVER / ESA initiative is to develop a service to produce a global land-cover map for the year 2005-2006, using the fine resolution (300 m) mode data acquired over the full year 2005 by the MERIS sensor on-board the ENVISAT satellite.
This new product is intended to update and to complement the other existing comparable global products, such as the global land cover map at 1 km resolution for the year 2000 produced by the Joint Research Center (JRC). It is also expected to improve on such previous global products, in particular through a finer spatial resolution (300 m).
Land Cover map at 300 m spatial resolution over Europe
The thematic legend of the final product is compatible with the FAO-UNEP Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). The GLOBCOVER product is developed with an international network of partners, in particular, FAO, GOFC, IGBP, EEA, JRC and UNEP.
The first phase of the project, which ended in December 2006, consisted in developing geometric and radiometric pre-processing version 1 algorithms, and classification methods, and in implementing them in an operational processing center. In June 2007, 6 bimonthly mosaïcs of surface reflectances in 13 spectral band over the globe and a land cover map over Europe have been generated between June 2005 and April 2006 and presented at the Envisat Symposium in Montreux. In March 2008, a preliminary version of the land cover map has been communicated for evaluation to the users associated to the project (FAO, JRC, UNEP, GOFC-GOLD, EEA) during the 2nd GLOBCOVER User Consultation Workshop. This map can be viewed with a zooming capacity.
A second version with algorithmic improvements is under production using the whole dataset acquired between December 2004 and June 2006. The 10 bimonthly mosaïcs of surface reflectances in 13 spectral band over the globe are now available. They are used to generate a consolidated version of global land cover map at 300 m resolution, which should be available at the Autumn 2008. Regional maps are also available with classes specific to each bio-climatic area. Posters of these maps can be downloaded.
The processing chain includes two major steps :
a Preprocessing chain leading to mosaïcs of surface reflectance in 13 spectral bands
a Classification chain leading to the final land cover map at 300 m resolution.
The GLOBCOVER processing chain
The Consortium is lead by the POSTEL Service Centre at Medias-France and is based on three pillars of equal importance :
"Preprocessing" Pillar for the design of the preprocessing steps, under the responsibility of Brockmann Consult. This pillar includes support teams, that is, Noveltis (cloud
screening & atmospheric corrections), Magellium (geometric corrections) and POSTEL/MEDIAS-France (BRDF correction and
compositing to generate images such as the one below).
"Classification" Pillar for the design of the automatic classification and labeling procedure, under the responsibility of UCL. This pillar includes the Synoptics (newly Infram) support team (land cover map validation), as well as
a panel of international experts (land cover map validation).
"Software and Production" Pillar for the design of the hardware and software system, under the responsibility of the POSTEL Service Centre at MEDIAS-France. This pillar includes the Spacebel support team (support in processing line implementation, software system verification).
Multi spectral color composite over region of Valencia (Spain)
A detailed documentation is already available. It includes several categories of documents :
general news about the project progress. These are edited by ESA. You will find some examples below (Newsletters n° 3, 4, 5)
Newsletter N°3
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Newsletter N°4
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Newsletter N°5
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Newsletter N°6
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Newsletter N°7
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