3924 manner by automatic image classification. This paper describes the operational land cover monitoring system for Mexico. It utilizes national-scale cartographic reference data, all available Landsat satellite imagery, and field inventory data for validation. Seven annual national land cover maps between 1993 and 2008 were produced. The classification scheme defined 9 and 12 classes at two hierarchical levels. Overall accuracies achieved were up to 76%. Tropical and temperate forest was classified with accuracy up to 78% and 82%, respectively. Although specifically designed for the needs of Mexico, the general process is suitable for other participating countries in the REDD+ program to comply with guidelines on standardization and transparency of methods and to assure comparability. However, reporting of change is ill-advised based on the annual land cover products and a combination of annual land cover and change detection algorithms is suggested.

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Virtual reality (VR) is a frequently emphasized issue on the Digital Earth (DE) agenda. While current DE research is more engaged in the technical aspects of VR applications, this paper focuses on what is possible with immersive virtual environments (IVE) from the user's perspective. After a brief discussion of spatial presence and embodiment in the context of IVE, both concepts will be merged into a geovisualization immersion pipeline (GIP) as a framework with which to systematically link technical and cognitive aspects of IVE. We will then analyze the general criteria that must be met by IVE in order to facilitate the experience of spatial presence. Adapting these criteria to the special requirements of geospatial data, a definition of geovisualization immersive virtual environments (GeoIVE) is formulated. Finally, the theoretical considerations of this paper are set into practice, using a GeoIVE of a coral reef ecosystem as an example. As we shall see, while GIS do not provide data models or data compatibility for direct visualization of GeoIVE on VR output devices, game engines can serve as middleware to fill this gap. ARTICLE HISTORY

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