In: Wagner W„ Szekely, B. (eds.): ISPRS TC VII Symposium - 100 Years ISPRS, Vienna, Austria, July 5-7, 2010, IAPRS, Vol. XXXVIII, Part 7B 
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development of the fruit bearing, stock breeding, tourism 
etc. 
Fig. 1.1. Albania on the west of Balkan Peninsula 
The climate is Mediterranean on the west. Inside the 
country are appeared the influences of the continental 
phenomenons in the climate while in height the alpine ones. 
Summer, in general, is hot and dry, while the winter is wet. 
The period with equal or higher temperature than 10° C 
changes from 260 to 300 days in a year. In general there 
precipitate average 1480 mm in a year. But the average 
annual quantity of the precipitation changes from 600 mm 
to 2100 mm. There are met 2000 - 2700 hduk with sun 
radiation. The extraordinary meteorological situations 
which are accompanied with economical damages happen 
rather often. 
Albania is rich with water richness. It is traversed 
by a hydrographical network with general length over 49 
000 km and mean density 1.7 km/km 2 . The annual volume 
of the water quantity of the rivers arrives 41.2 km 3 . Main 
rivers are Buna and Drin with average discharge 680 m/sec, 
Vjosa 195 m 3 /sec, Mati 103 m 3 /sec, Seman 95 m 3 / sec. It 
has parts of the big tectonic lakes (Shkodra, Ohri and 
Prespa), glacial lakes (about 30), charstic ones (80), littoral 
(10) and artificial (700). It is rich with underground water 
and big karstic springs, mineral springs and thermo mineral 
ones. Some of the rivers, parts of the littoral and some lakes 
are polluted by the industrial, agricultural and urban wastes. 
Vegetation world is various. There are 3250 kinds of 
natural plants, which constitute 29 % of the total number 
grown in Europe and 47 % of the Balkan plants. In Albania 
are met plants of different regions such as: Mediterranean, 
north Balkanic, alpine - Carpathian, central of Europe, 
euroaziatics. etc. 1 % of the Albanian vegetation is endemic 
and 5 % is sub endemic. There are four vegetation belts 
(Mediterranean shrubs, oaks, beeches and conifers, alpine 
in pastures). 
About 35 % of the territory is occupied by the forests, 
from which to every person belongs 0.3 ha. The high forests 
occupy about 47 % of the forest area, low forest 29 % and 
shrubs 24 %. About 10 000 ha forest are proclaimed 
national parks. The wild world is rich with many kinds of 
animals, even rare ones ( grey dark bear, wild cat and goat, 
pelican, etc). As we see the country is significant for the 
biodiversity but is damaged a lot by the man's activity. 
3. LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS 
Classification is an abstract representation of the 
situation in the field using well-defined diagnostic criteria: 
the classifiers. Sokal (1974) defined it as: "the ordering or 
arrangement of objects into groups or sets on the basis of 
their relationships." Classification is one of the most 
important steps in handling remote sensing imagery and 
represents important input data for geographic information 
systems (GIS) (Ostir 2006) 
A classification describes the systematic framework 
with the names of the classes and the criteria used to 
distinguish them, and the relation between classes. 
Classification thus necessarily involves definition of class 
boundaries that should be clear, precise, possibly 
quantitative, and based upon objective criteria. Land cover 
classes are defined by a string of classifiers, but due to the 
heterogeneity of land cover, and with the aim of achieving a 
logical and functional hierarchical arrangement of the 
classifiers, certain design criteria have been applied. 
A classification should therefore be: 
• Scale independent, meaning that the classes at all 
levels of the system should be applicable at any 
scale or level of detail; and 
• Source independent, implying that it is 
independent of the means used to collect 
information, whether satellite imagery, aerial 
photography, field survey or some combination of 
them is used. 
Classification systems come in two basic formats, 
hierarchical and non-hierarchical. Most systems are 
hierarchically structured because such a classification offers 
more consistency owing to its ability to accommodate 
different levels of information, starting with structured 
broad-level classes, which allow further systematic 
subdivision into more detailed sub-classes. The Land Cover 
Classification System (LCCS) that is used for land cover in 
Albania is in the format hierarchical. 
4. LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM IN 
ALBANIA 
4.1. USING LAND COVER 
The words about land/terra/ground that are used 
until now in Albanian literature, are: “geography”, 
“land/ground”, “topographic elements of land/ground ”, 
“geographic environment” “geographic landscape”,