Land cover classes in C3S-LC-L4-LCCS-Map differ from documentation

Datasets and Usage C3S - Datasets and Usage
1

Dear all,

we appreciate these great resources for our research!

We have downloaded and analyzed the C3S-LC-L4-LCCS data from Land cover classification gridded maps from 1992 to present derived from satellite observations . After aggregating to 5min (working on the 300m data was too slow), we believe that the data differs from the documentation (http://dast.data.compute.cci2.ecmwf.int/documents/satellite-land-cover/WP2-FDDP-LC-2021-2022-SENTINEL3-300m-v2.1.1_PUGS_v1.1_final.pdf).

In the documentation it looks like there should be “summary-classes” e.g. 60 for “Tree cover, broadleaved, deciduous closed to open (>15%)” and further detailed subclasses for closed cover (>40%) and open cover (15-40%) (classes 61 and 62 for broadleaved, deciduous). However the areas of these subclasses are not included in the summary class, as can be seen in the attached plot for 2022. Are we misunderstanding the documentation (p.34)?

We appreciate any help on this.

Best,

Fabian

decidous_broad_closed2open
decidous_broad_closed2open800×1600 23.9 KB

2

I realize that my question was asked ambiguously.

Basically, we need to know which cover % classes the different bands refer to, because according to the legend it should only be 2 (open: >15 and <40 and closed: >40). But what is contained in the closed to open class?

3

Dear Fabian,

Apologies for the delay in responding to your inquiry, and for the fact that your message was unfortunately overlooked. The Land Cover team will provide a detailed answer to your question by the end of July.

In the meantime, could you please let us know how you spatially aggregated the original Land Cover maps? Specifically, did you use the CCI LC user tool (available at ESA/CCI viewer)?

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding.

Kind regards,
Grit