Land Cover Classification Map Of Great Britain 1990

Land Cover Map of Great Britain 1990 is a raster dataset classifying land into 25 habitat classes at a 1km resolution. It was produced in the early 1990s by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology using supervised classification of Landsat 5 satellite imagery.

Use Cases

• Analyze percentage coverage of 25 target habitat classes, such as arable farmland or deciduous woodland, per 1km band for ecological planning.
• Model urban spread by examining temporal changes in suburban and urban areas classification from this 1990 baseline.
• Assess land use for agriculture and forestry by mapping distributions of pastures, meadows, and evergreen woodland classes.
• Monitor conservation areas by quantifying coverage of upland bogs, dwarf shrub heaths, and other moorland habitats.

Strengths

• Provides classification into 25 distinct land cover classes including sea, urban areas, farmland, and woodland.
• Derived from higher resolution 25m source data using supervised maximum likelihood classification of satellite imagery.
• Spatial coverage is comprehensive for Great Britain at a consistent 1km resolution.

Limitations

• Data is from the early 1990s and is temporally stale for analyzing current land cover changes.
• Dataset documentation contains an error regarding band indexing (bands run 1-26, not 0-25).
• The dataset has been withdrawn, which may indicate issues with availability or official support.

Provenance

Source

Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, a forerunner of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

Collection Method

Supervised maximum likelihood classifications of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper satellite data.

Time Range

Early 1990s.

Freshness

null

Geography

Great Britain.