Fully automatic land cover map generation at country scale over France

=> Up to now, over France, there is no Land Cover Map generated annually at a decameter resolution.  The Corine Land Cover map, which is widely used, is only produced every 5 years, and 2012 version was issued in 2015. This map is mainly produced using photo interpretation, and therefore requires a very large amount of work.  The very accurate Land Cover layer from IGN (French cartographic institute), is updated regularly, region wise, over a cycle of 3 to 4 years, and therefore only provides the perennial land cover information. Two other products exist, the Global Land Cover 30m produced at LANDSAT resolutions, et the Copernicus HR layers, but with a quite low quality,  for instance on the Landes forest in France. 

Thanks to its high resolution observations, Sentinel-2 should enable an automatic generation of land cover maps at country scale. Based on a several years of research at CESBIO,  our project to automatically produce land cover maps over the whole France is gaining momentum. Research efforts are being organised within the THEIA Expertise Center on Operational Land Cover.

The first prototype products were computed using the LANDSAT 8 Level 2A data from Theia, pending availability of a whole year of Sentinel-2 data. The first products span over one third of France, and have 15 to 20 classes according to the versions.

The land cover maps processor is based on Orfeo Tool Box applications, set to music by Marcela Arias, under Jordi Inglada’s direction, and with large contributions of several CESBIO colleagues for reference data collection of for the development of processors.

Extract of the version 1 of land cover product, computed using LANDSAT8 data in 2013. Click on the image for an interactive display

Warning :

These prototype products were not created in ideal conditions. The LANDSAT-8 2013 data set starts in April only, as the satellite was not yet operational before. The start of vegetation cycle has been missed. The future operational products will use a complete year of data. Moreover, LANDSAT 8 data do not have the same repetitivity and resolution as Sentinel-2, and therefore, the final map quality is not what we expect from Sentinel-2.

However, it is still the same type of data, and their processing needs to overcome the same difficulties. It is therefore a full-scale test of our methodology. And finally, although not as accurate, the maps have the same nature as our final product and should allow users to get a first idea of the products Theia will deliver.

These products contain errors and must only be considered as a draft. We release them in order to get feedback on their quality and usefulness. Please tell us how they might be useful to you. Tell us also if you find them too inaccurate, or if there is something missing.

Prototype product description and download