GLOBAL/CONTINENTAL LAND COVER MONITORING 
Ryutaro Tateishi, Masayuki Matsuoka, Wen Cheng-gang, and Park Jong-geol 
Center for Environmental Remote Sensing(CEReS), Chiba University 
1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku Chiba 263 Japan 
Fax: +81-43-290-3857 
Email: tateishi@rsirc.cr.chiba-u.ac.jp 
Commission VII, Working Group 5 
KEY WORDS: land cover, AVHRR, global 
monitoring, continental monitoring 
ABSTRACT 
Land cover is one of the key environmental variables for 
global change studies and it can be surveyed by remote 
sensing techniques. NOAA AVHRR data made it 
possible to monitor global/continental land cover. Since 
land cover types vary place by place, we need local, 
regional, continental, and global approaches. This paper 
focuses on continental or global approach. By remote 
sensing technique, two types of land cover information 
can be extracted: land cover information at a certain 
time(or year) and land cover change information during a 
certain period. What the authors have done are (1) the 
development of four arc minute grid global land cover 
data set using 8km resampled AVHRR NDVI of 1990, 
(2) the development of thirty arc second grid land cover 
data set of the whole Asia using 1km AVHRR NDVI and 
surface temperature data of 1992-93, (3) the development 
of preprocessing method to remove undesirable factors in 
AVHRR data for land cover change monitoring. Through 
this study, the authors identified necessary further actions/ 
studies for global/continental land cover monitoring by 
satellite data. These are accumulation of land cover 
ground truth data from local/regional land cover projects, 
classification of agricultural land, and others. 
INTRODUCTION 
There are two purposes to get land cover information. 
One is for environmental studies such as global change 
studies. The other is for land use planning. For 
example, the land cover project by the Land Cover 
490 
Working Group of the International Geosphere Biosphere 
Programme(IGBP) Data and Information System(DIS)- 
pursues global mapping with 1km resolution for global 
change study(Townshend 1992). On the other hand, 
AFRICOVER project by Food and Agriculture 
Organization (FAO) aims to develop the framework of 
land cover mapping of the African continent by deciding 
land cover classification system for the purpose of land 
use planning of each African country(Gregorio 1996). In 
either purpose, satellite data plays an important role in 
land cover mapping as a key input. 
Global AVHRR GAC data is available since 1981. 
NOAA and NASA publishes 8km resampled AVHRR as 
NOAA/NASA Pathfinder AVHRR Land Data Set from 
1981. This is the only available globally covered 
temporal satellite data at present. This data is usable for 
global land cover change detection with a limitation due 
to poor resolution. IGBP-DIS developed global 1km 
AVHRR data set for 18 months from April 1992. This 
data set is suitable for global land cover mapping in 
terms of resolution though undesirable effect by 
mosaicking remains. There are and will be some new 
sensors for global observation such as 
SPOT/VEGETATION (1998), EOS-AM1/MODIS(1998), 
and ADEOS-IL/GLI(2000). 
At present, AVHRR is the only available satellite data for 
global/continental land cover mapping and change 
detection. In the following sections, authors introduce 
the methods and results of global/ continental land cover 
mapping and on-going study of the preprocessing of 
temporal AVHRR data for land cover change detection. 
Furthermore, necessary actions and studies are referred for 
the better land cover monitoring. 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 7, Budapest, 1998 
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