Development of a consistent methodology to derive land cover information on a European scale from remote sensing for environmental monitoring; the PELCOM report

In the current policy frameworks the need for up-to-date and reliable information for entire Europe is well known. A step in this direction has been taken by the Pan-European Land Cover Monitoring (PELCOM) project. A concise classification methodologywas established for mapping major land cover types by using regional expertise in an integrated approach of NOAA-AVHRR satellite data and ancillary information. An important result was the 1-km pan-European land cover database. An extensive accuracy assessment has been implemented on basis of 40 interpreted Landsat-TM satellite images distributed over pan-Europe. The total average accuracy was 69.2%. The PELCOM land cover database was applied successfully in various environmental and climate studies. The use of AVHRR satellite data has, however, its limitations for monitoring purposes due to the fine scale on which thematic land cover occur. Medium resolution satellite imagery (e.g. MODIS and MERIS) will play a crucial role in the near future in monitoring the European landscape.