Corine land cover change detection in Europe (case studies of the Netherlands and Slovakia)

Abstract We present a land cover change detection methodology in the framework of the IMAGE and CORINE Land Cover 2000 (I&CLC2000) project managed jointly by the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy. The generated data layers CLC2000 (land cover for the year 2000) and CLC90/2000-changes (land cover changes between the years 1990–2000) cover 29 European countries with a total area of about 4.5 million square kilometers at scale 1:100 000. The variants of computer aided visual interpretation of satellite images referred to as updating and backdating were applied in the I&CLC2000 project. This makes use of the revised CLC90 data layer and the Landsat ETM satellite images from 2000 (±1 year) for generation of the CLC 2000 data layer. The CLC90/2000-changes data layer is generated by the overlay of the CLC90 and CLC2000 data layers with the change area of minimum 5 ha. This approach may overestimate and underestimate identified land cover changes in some specific situations described in the paper. As an example of land cover change, identification obtained by applying the updating method in the case of the Netherlands is presented. An area of 1681 km 2 of land cover change was identified for the period 1986–2000. Backdating was a suitable methodological tool applied to the land cover inventory in Slovakia for the years 1970–2000 (3156 km 2 of land cover changes were identified). Thematic accuracy of derived data layers is ⩾85% and the geometric accuracy is better than 100 m. The CLC methodology and results are widely used in several other projects and are of relevance to policies in land management, nature conservation and water management.