• Introduction
• Land Cover Map 2007 (released in July 2011)
• Land Cover Map 2000
• Land Cover Map 1990
• Further information

Introduction

Land cover is the physical material on the surface of the Earth. Examples include artificial materials such as roads and buildings in urban areas, natural and managed vegetated surfaces and inland water.

Land cover maps have multiple uses. They are used for the management of natural resources, urban planning, carbon accounting and flood risk modelling, to name only a few.

CEH has produced three digital Land Cover Maps which have been successfully used in a wide range of applications over the last 20 years. Details of the three Land Cover Maps and how to access them are provided below and via the links in the right-hand column.

Land Cover Map 2007 (LCM2007)

LCM2007, released in July 2011, builds upon the successes of Land Cover Map 2000 (LCM2000) and employs similar but enhanced classification techniques. The principal difference between LCM2007 and LCM2000 is the source of land cover objects. LCM2007 objects come from generalised digital cartography, refined with image segments. Deriving objects from digital cartography is advantageous. Cartographic boundaries very accurately delineate real-world land cover objects (e.g. lakes, fields, settlements, industrial areas, semi-natural areas etc.) and this improves the spatial accuracy of LCM2007 over LCM2000. Moreover, the accurate delineation of real-world objects helps to clarify the spectral properties of the land surface and therefore improves thematic accuracy, too.

Land Cover Map 2000

LCM2000 is the second map in the series and includes Northern Ireland. The production of LCM2000 used object based image analysis (OBIA) techniques. Instead of representing the land surface as regular sized pixels, OBIA considers the land surface as a collection of discrete irregular objects such as forests, lakes, urban areas and fields. Land cover objects for LCM2000 were derived from image segments and were assigned land cover values according to the pixel distributions within. These classifications were then refined using contextual and ancillary information.

Land Cover Map 1990

The first digital land cover map for Great Britain derived from satellite imagery is the Land Cover Map of Great Britain 1990 (LCM1990). This is a 25m x 25m pixel land cover product describing land cover in 1990. It was produced by automated classification techniques where each pixel is assigned to a land cover class based upon its spectral characteristics.

Further information

Please see the links in the right-hand column for more on the individual maps and how to access them.