Project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
After the successfull conclusion of Phase-1, the project has obtained green light to enter Phase-2.
The main goal of the HR Land Cover ECV project is to study in detail the role of the spatial resolution in the mapping of land cover and land cover changes to support climate modelling research. Accurate land cover mapping and land cover change detection are extremely important for a better understanding of the global climate system. Land cover and related changes are in fact both cause and consequence of climate change either when the change is human-induced or generated from natural events. This has been widely recognized by the scientific community and demonstrated by the previous phase of the CCI programme, focused on the generation of Medium Resolution (MR) land cover maps at global scale. Differently from the MR land cover CCI, which provided annual land cover maps at 300m resolution covering the period 1992-2015, the HRLC project aims at producing maps characterized by a spatial resolution of 10m/30m. Moving from 300m to 30m requires the definition of new data analysis and processing methods, reframing the perspective with respect to the MR project both from the theoretical and the operational view point. Although HR potentially increases the capability of analyzing in detail spatial patterns and changes in the land cover, many challenges are introduced with respect to the MR case.
