The Land Cover Map of Great Britain: an automated classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper data

Abstract

The Land Cover Map of Great Britain was produced using supervised maximum-likelihood classifications of Landsat Thematic Mapper data. By combining summer and winter data, classification accuracies were substantially improved over single-data analyses. The map, bosed on a 25-m grid, records 25 cover types, consisting of sea and inland water, beaches and bare ground, developed and arable land, and 18 types of semi-natural vegetation. General cover is recorded at a field-by-field scale, while key landscape features, with strong spectral signatures, show patterns down to a minimum mappable unit of 0.125 ha. Comparisons with independent ground reference data showed correspondences which varied between 67 percent and 89 percent depending on the level of detail at which comparisons were made.