Global Land Use and Land Cover Monitoring: Main Products and Major Perspectives

About:

As the global population grows, humankind continues to modify the land use and land cover (LULC) of the planet mainly motivated by the increasing demand for food and commodities production.

In the last 50 years, about 17% of land use on the Earth’s surface has changed, an unprecedented conversion of natural landscapes modifying climate regimes, reducing biodiversity and contributing to the overall global warming. This process has been under close monitoring for many decades through satellites orbiting the Earth (e.g. Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, PROBA-V), responsible for frequently delivering updated image data on a global scale. Thanks to the recent advances in Machine Learning, high processing/cloud computing and remote sensing have allowed multiple research institutes to transform this large imagery archive into LULC mapping products, contributing to a better understanding of the drivers behind land conversion and their impacts on the global environment.

In this discussion panel, you will learn more about the main LULC products produced by the World Resource Institute, the University of Maryland and Wageningen University, including their methodology, characteristics, applicability, limitations as well future perspectives. During the discussion, the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and make comments on specific topics.

Follow the live stream with:

• Monitoring the pulse of the planet’s land and its nature-based carbon – Fred Stolle (World Resources Institute)
• Global land cover change and human impact on natural land – Matthew Hansen (University of Maryland)
• Advancements in European efforts in global land cover mapping and map updating – Dainius Masiliunas and Nandika Tsenbazar (Wageningen University and Research)

General information:

• This discussion forum is free-of-costs and can be followed in person or  via Teams’ streaming service;
• To follow the live stream, register on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/global-land-use-and-land-cover-monitoring-main-productsmajor-perspectives-tickets-344785862797
• The event is organized by the OpenGeoHub foundation in collaboration with Wageningen University;
• After the discussion panel, we invite the participants to join the Happy Hour at the Spot bar (Orion building, ground floor).