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Project title

TaLAM - Toward Landcover Accounting and Monitoring

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

University College Cork (UCC)

Lead Applicant

Fiona Cawkwell

Project Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop a process for mapping landcover that is compatible with CORINE and future developments in Copernicus (formerly GMES), whilst also overcoming the two major limitations of the CORINE national landcover product, namely the inadequate spatial and temporal resolution, and the inappropriate thematic classes. The project will produce a system that can populate OSi PRIME2 (P2) parcels at a 1:10,000 scale with landcover labels and a minimum mapping unit (MMU) of 1ha in unenclosed P2 polygons, but can also be downgraded spatially and thematically to CORINE reporting requirements (of 25ha MMU and change at 5ha).The project will adopt a hybrid object-oriented approach to mapping the P2 objects, which will be populated with additional data from existing datasets, augmented by high resolution satellite imagery. It is anticipated that the Random Forest, and other state-of-the-art machine learning, classifiers will be used as they are well suited to land cover classification when using many different sources of information, and are capable of integrating both categorical and continuous data. The nomenclature for the landcover classes will be agreed over a series of educational encounters with stakeholders and end-users through a process of mutual information exchange and education. Local dissemination initially runs through the stakeholder group in WP2, which will be made up of geospatial �champions� who will promote the use and development of the project�s outputs within their organisations. Several existing forums will be exploited for local communications, and a dedicated webpage will keep all interested parties up-to-date. Scientific outputs, including peer-reviewed papers and presentations at national and international conferences, will be augmented by articles in non-specialist science publications and national media. The ultimate outputs will be the generation of landcover maps and documents pertaining to their implementation and delivery under anticipated data availability scenarios.

Grant Approved

�190,794.37

Research Hub

Natural Environment

Research Theme

Soils and Land-Use

Start Date

01/05/2014

Initial Projected Completion Date

19/01/2016