MAPPING OF SE ASIA LAND COVER COMBINING TERRA/MODIS DATA WITH THE EXISTING CHINA NATIONAL LAND USE/COVER DATA

H.P. Sato¹, R. Tateishi², J. Xiao²

1 - Geographical Survey Institute, Geography and Crustal Dynamics Research Center, Tsukuba, Japan

2 - Chiba University, Center for Environmental Remote Sensing, Chiba, Japan

hsato@gsi.go.jp

Land cover mapping at coarse spatial resolution provides key information needed for scientific analyses, resource management and policy development at regional, continental and global level. There are many global/continental or large area land cover mapping project, and the latest land cover map will be produced on each occasion of new-sensor-data distribution. Ground truth data are indispensable to map the land cover, however, there is no steady way for the producers to use the other projects’ land cover map as the ground truth data. China occupies large area in SE Asia and provides one-kilometer-resolution land use and land cover data as of 1995 and 2000, respectively, at the form of grid-cell digital data. In this study, it will be explained how to extract the ground truth data from these existing digital data, and how land cover as of 2003 will be mapped using TERRA/MODIS one-kilometer resolution data.