An updatable dataset revealing changes in land cover types in Mongolia

The Mongolian Plateau (MP) is located in the interior of Eurasia, far from the sea, and is extremely vulnerable to climate change and the deleterious effects of human activity. Land degradation is one of the indicators in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and combating it is a major challenge in Mongolia that is located in the core part of MP. Using object-oriented remote sensing interpretation, we obtained the refined land cover data of Mongolia from 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 with 30-m resolution. The land cover classification of Mongolia comprises 11 categories, which are forest, meadow steppe, real steppe, desert steppe, barren, sand, desert, ice, water, cropland, and built area. Their overall classification accuracies, corresponding to the year, were 82.26%, 82.77%, 92.34%, and 81.84%. The dataset of this study fills the gaps in high-resolution land cover data in Mongolia.

蒙古高原（Mongolian Plateau，MP）地处欧亚大陆内部，远离海洋，极易受气候变化与人类活动带来的有害影响冲击。土地退化是联合国可持续发展目标的监测指标之一，而治理土地退化是地处蒙古高原核心区域的蒙古国面临的重大挑战。本研究采用面向对象遥感解译方法，获取了蒙古国1990年、2000年、2010年及2020年的30米分辨率精细化土地覆盖数据。该数据集的土地覆盖分类体系包含11个类别，分别为林地、草甸草原、真草原（real steppe）、荒漠草原、裸地、沙地、沙漠、冰雪、水体、耕地以及建设用地。对应各年份的总体分类精度分别为82.26%、82.77%、92.34%及81.84%。本研究构建的数据集填补了蒙古国高分辨率土地覆盖数据的空白。