An International Library for Land Cover Legends: The Land Cover Legend Registry

Abstract

Information on land cover is vital to numerous United Nations (UN) missions, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Because land cover data are developed by a variety of organizations for a range of objectives, they are based on different classification schemes and have discrepancies. In addition, the sustainability for land cover is hampered by limited access to information and documentation. Accordingly, international standards for land cover are developed to improve interoperability between different land cover datasets. However, the use and development of land cover datasets are limited by various factors including availability of properly documented land cover legends in support of different applications including change assessment, comparison, and international reporting. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of land cover in achieving several goals and to introduce the first international platform for land cover legend, named Land Cover Legend Registry (LCLR). This registry is a contribution to the international land cover community and the UN in effort to promote and support data harmonization processes and interoperability from local to global level, and vice versa. Users can not only use the registry for preparing consistent datasets, but also contribute to it by providing the latest data to ensure the long-term availability of both updated and existing datasets around the world. Moreover, building on the experience developing land cover legends with different nations, a brief explanation on the preparation of legends is also provided. Additionally, it is more important than ever to develop land cover registers to support the use, expansion, integration, and use uptake of land cover data, particularly for innovative remote sensing, machine learning, and information and communication technologies and techniques that build on existing and national contexts.

Land Characterization System Software: Implementing Land Cover Ontology

“…For this, the FAO has developed different software services in support of updated, harmonized, and efficient data. In particular, the FAO developed the Land Cover Legend Registry [13] (LCLR) in 2021. This registry includes a land cover legend at the local, national, regional, and global levels in different file formats (.csv, .lccs, .eapx, and .xsd).…”

“…Data, including the current legend and land cover classes, are stored locally using HTML5 local storage for seamless access. The system employs React Flow [13] for managing directed graphs for graphical representation. The library can be used to display any graph, and therefore, LCML, which is a directed, acyclic graph, can be shown as well.…”

Advancing High-Resolution Land Cover Mapping in Colombia: The Importance of a Locally Appropriate Legend

“…The reliability of representing biophysical conditions using a thematic land-cover legend affects the accuracy of land-cover mapping [8,14,15]. Thematic legends are developed by a variety of organizations and for specific objectives, sometimes generating discrepancies among them [8,16]. Some assessments have shown differences in accuracies among land cover maps with different legends when common areas are evaluated, even after legend harmonization [15,17,18].…”

“…Some assessments have shown differences in accuracies among land cover maps with different legends when common areas are evaluated, even after legend harmonization [15,17,18]. Additional issues can emerge when thematic legends are developed for specific environments and then transferred to new environments [16], such as the case of the CORINE (Coordination of Information on the Environment) land cover legend [19,20]. CORINE was developed for environmental purposes in Europe based on their climatic, geological, and socioeconomic conditions [21].…”