Chapter 14
REMOTE SENSING OF LAND COVER AND LAND
COVER CHANGE
B. K. Wyatt
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Monks Wood, United Kingdom.
1.
INTRODUCTION
An extensive literature describing the use of remote sensing for land
cover mapping has emerged since the launch of Landsat-1 in 1974. This
includes numerous references to applications that purport to detect or
measure change. However, many reported studies are either misleading, in
that they describe limited environmental mapping exercises as “monitoring”
or else are essentially case studies, limited to particular regions or time
periods and designed principally to develop, test or demonstrate
experimental techniques.
In Britain and elsewhere in Europe to the present time, analysis of
changes in land use or in land cover that progress beyond such local studies
have depended predominantly on data collected in the field (Barr, Bunce and
Heal 1995; Bunce et al. 1996), or from air photography (Huntings Surveys
and Consultants Ltd, 1986, Tudor, G.J. and Mackey, E.C., 1995). These are
instances in which remote sensing has been used as an exploratory tool. For
example, a limited assessment of the potential of remote sensing for change
monitoring formed part of a national countryside survey which took place in
Britain in 1988, entitled “Monitoring Landscape Change” (Deane, Griffiths
and Greenwood 1987). The ‘LACOAST’ project, undertaken by the Space
Applications Institute (SAI) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the
European Commission exemplifies probably the most extensive use of
remote sensing for quantitative assessment of changes in land cover and land
127
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 127–136.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
REMOTE SENSING OF LAND COVER AND LAND
COVER CHANGE
B. K. Wyatt
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Monks Wood, United Kingdom.
1.
INTRODUCTION
An extensive literature describing the use of remote sensing for land
cover mapping has emerged since the launch of Landsat-1 in 1974. This
includes numerous references to applications that purport to detect or
measure change. However, many reported studies are either misleading, in
that they describe limited environmental mapping exercises as “monitoring”
or else are essentially case studies, limited to particular regions or time
periods and designed principally to develop, test or demonstrate
experimental techniques.
In Britain and elsewhere in Europe to the present time, analysis of
changes in land use or in land cover that progress beyond such local studies
have depended predominantly on data collected in the field (Barr, Bunce and
Heal 1995; Bunce et al. 1996), or from air photography (Huntings Surveys
and Consultants Ltd, 1986, Tudor, G.J. and Mackey, E.C., 1995). These are
instances in which remote sensing has been used as an exploratory tool. For
example, a limited assessment of the potential of remote sensing for change
monitoring formed part of a national countryside survey which took place in
Britain in 1988, entitled “Monitoring Landscape Change” (Deane, Griffiths
and Greenwood 1987). The ‘LACOAST’ project, undertaken by the Space
Applications Institute (SAI) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the
European Commission exemplifies probably the most extensive use of
remote sensing for quantitative assessment of changes in land cover and land
127
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 127–136.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.