GLAD

This study supports USGS land cover research to generate and validate continuous field global land cover datasets. The continuous field data will be produced for percent tree, percent barren, percent water, and percent other vegetation. This procedure requires extensive research on satellite data pre-processing, image classification, and results validation using Landsat 30 m and entails developing innovative techniques to automatically process and characterize large volumes of data. Advanced research is needed to produce continuous field data for the year 2000 and 2010 and annual update of continuous field data from 2010 onwards. This involves analyses of very high resolution (1-4m) data for training and validation. Validation of results needs to be performed following Global Observations of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC/GOLD) and other international standards. The methods will be used to identify land cover change products and ‘hot spots’ (areas with major land cover changes) around the world. An operational methodology needs to be developed that can be used at USGS/EROS. This project will be coordinated with a global forest mapping and change effort, a collaboration with the University of Maryland, and USGS, funded by the Moore Foundation.