Land cover and use in Latin America and the Caribbean
Having tools to understand land cover and land use in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is crucial for informed decision-making on territorial planning, environmental management and sustainable development. It allows the monitoring of changes in the territory, helping to mitigate deforestation, protect biodiversity, food security and promote efficient public policies.
Methodology
For the development of this project, general land use classes were defined which, together with the information provided by various institutions in the countries represented, allowed the training of machine learning algorithms on large volumes of multispectral satellite data (Sentinel 2) from the Copernicus programme re-sampled to 20 metres. In addition, for this product, the specificities of the different bioclimatic environments of the region were considered.
This Land Use and Land Cover Classification (LULC) service specifically designed for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will provide a continuous monitoring service so that the scientific community, citizens and decision-makers have access to spatially and temporally continuous information on the composition of the territory of our region.