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Alan Belward 
Joint Research Centre 
European Commission 
Italy 
The IGBP-DIS began the 1km land cover project in 1990. This has the goal of collecting, archiving 
and processing daily data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) for all 
terrestrial surfaces and then deriving land cover data sets from this archive for the IGBP Core 
Projects, The work has been co-ordinated by the IGBP-DIS Land Cover Working Group(LCWG). 
The first problem addressed by the LCWG has the lack of a consistent global 1km AVHRR data 
archive. (Townshend 1992).In April 1992 the United States' Geological Survey's EROS Data 
Center(EDC) and the European Space Agency(ESA) working closely with the U.S. National 
Aeronautic and Space Administration and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial 
Research Organisation began to co-ordinate data collection from 29 receiving stations from around the 
word. In the first 18 months of the project more than 4.4 Tera bytes of 1km resolution AVHRR data 
were archived. The data collection has continued to data(with the exception of the period September 
1994 to February 1995 when the AVHRR sensor failed). 
There are now over 43,000 satellite scenes available in the 1km project's archive. Most of these data 
have been assembled into a coherent global archive(Eidenshink and Faundeen 1994). Seven global 
composites and 36 North American Composites have been produced, the remaining global data sets 
should be available by January 1996. Information on the Global Land 1km Data Set is available at: 
http://sun | .cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/1KM/1kmhomepage.htm1 
Recognizing that the IGBP Core Projects have diverse information requirements, and that 
subsequently, there is no single land cover product that will meet all requirements, the LCWG is 
undertaking a sequential programme. This project focuses on four main actions: 
Action 1. A global land cover classification at 1km resolution. 
Action 2: Direct parameterization of key land cover variables(e.g., albedo, and NPP). 
Action 3: Functional classification of vegetation/land cover(e.g., seasonality) 
Action 4: Data set Validation 
LCWG is currently concentrating on Actions 1 and 4. A 'fast track' 1km global land cover data set is 
planned for 1997. 
The fast track land cover classification scheme is based on that of Running et al.(1994); including 
removal of climate from class definitions, and reliance on ancillary remotely sensed measures, to 
provide relative indicators of temporal dynamics of biophysical properties. The scheme is based on 
definitions of three canopy components: above ground biomass, leaf longevity, and leaf type. 
The global 1km land cover data set will be created on a continent by continent basis. Whilst different