Landsat mapping of Great Britain

In the summer of 1990, the Environmental Information Centre of ITE was commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment to produce a land cover map for the United Kingdom. The aims of this study are: 1. to compile a digital map of land cover in Great Britain, based on a hierarchical classification of important major land cover types 2. to make quantitative assessments of accuracy of end products 3. to integrate the map with the field survey data of Countryside Survey 1990 and with other topographic and thematic data in a geographical information system (GIS) environment 4. to produce demonstrator GIS output in vector format. This paper describes preliminary aspects of the project and initial results of the survey are presented. The product is an integral part of the Countryside Survey 1990, which aims to provide information on the land use and ecology of Great Britain in 1990, to assess past changes, and is a baseline against which to measure changes in the future.