A system for monitoring land cover

Abstract

The Macaulay Institute aims to update the Land Cover of Scotland (1988) dataset. This is a complex dataset, describing Scotland's land cover in terms of over 1300 classes, and whilst reports and assessments suggest that the primary method for update should be a manual comparison of air photos, they also emphasize the importance of exploring automated techniques. ETORA-II, a toolkit capable of supporting the complex automated analyses required, has been developed. Its prototype application, SYMOLAC-II, provides a proof-of-concept for ETORA-II, and development is ongoing. The final aim of this work is to produce an environmental information system for Scotland's land cover.