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CHIRPS Precipitation, Copernicus DEM, (Ag)ERA5 Meteorological Data, GEOS-5 Meteorological Data, IMERG Precipitation, Landsat satellites, MODIS sensors, MSG satellites, Sentinel-2 satellites, VIIRS sensors and WorldCover Land Cover
ESA WorldCover
Land cover can be defined as the observed (bio)-physical cover on the earth’s surface, encompassing vegetation, bare rock and soil as well as human-made features. Land use, on the other hand, can be derived from the land cover, combined or linked with the activities or actions of people in their environment (Di Gregorio, 2005). The ESA WorldCover global land cover products build further on the GlobCover and CCI Land Cover experiences from the European Space Agency and the algorithm to generate the WorldCover products is based on the algorithm to produce the dynamic yearly Copernicus Global Land Service Land Cover (CGLS-LC) map at 100m resolution.
Purpose of the data
The land cover map is used to calculate the minimum stomatal resistance, the maximum obstacle height, and provide land mask statistics. It is also used to determine the land cover-specific light use efficiency, i.e. the efficiency by which the vegetation converts solar energy into biomass. At L3 a crop map could theoretically also be used to calculate the NPP for a specific crop although the determination of the right LUE factor is complicated. More information on this aspect can be found in the section on LUE of the WaPOR documentation.
Approach
The ESA WorldCover 2021 product (Zanaga et al., 2022) at 10m resolution provides 10 land cover classes and mangroves: "Tree cover", "Shrubland", "Grassland", "Cropland", "Built-up", "Bare / sparse vegetation”, “Snow and Ice”, “Permanent water bodies”, “Herbaceous Wetland”, “Mangrove” and “Moss and lichen". The data can be downloaded as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFS at https://worldcover2021.esa.int/download. The land cover map is resampled to
| ESA WorldCover 2021 class | Minimum stomatal resistance [unit] | Maximum obstacle height [m] | Land mask | Light Use Efficiency [kgDM/GJPA] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tree cover | 200 | 5 | 1 | 2.23 |
| Shrubland | 175 | 1 | 1 | 2.10 |
| Grassland | 150 | 0.2 | 1 | 2.39 |
| Cropland | 125 | 1.5 | 1 | 2.70 |
| Built-up | 400 | 10 | 1 | 1.42 |
| Bare/sparse vegetation | 100 | 0.1 | 3 | 1.42 |
| Snow and ice | 100 | 0.1 | 1 | 0 |
| Permanent water bodies | 100 | 0.1 | 2 | 0 |
| Herbaceous wetland | 150 | 2 | 1 | 1.43 |
| Mangrove | 150 | 2 | 1 | 1.43 |
| Moss and lichen | 180 | 0.3 | 1 | 1.43 |
Challenges
ESA WorldCover is not (yet) operational (no updates).
Alternative sources
Within the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS), the Dynamic Land Cover map at 100 m resolution (CGLS-LC100) was released in the spring of 2019. “The product was generated by the Global component of the Land Service of Copernicus, the Earth Observation program of the European Commission. The research leading to the current version of the product has received funding from various European Commission Research and Technical Development programs. The product is based on PROBA-V data provided by Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and distributed by VITO.”
Updated