West Africa Land Use Land Cover Time Series

This series of three-period land use land cover (LULC) 2-kilometer resolution datasets (1975, 2000, and 2013) aids in monitoring change in West Africa’s land resources (exceptions: Capo Verde at 500 meters, the Gambia at 1 kilometer and Tchad at 4 kilometers). To monitor and map these changes, a 26 general LULC class system was used. The classification system that was developed was primarily inspired by the "Yangambi Classification" (Trochain, 1957). This reasonably broad class system for LULC was used because the classes can be readily identified on Landsat satellite imagery. A visual photo-interpretation approach was used to identify and map the LULC classes represented on Landsat images. The Rapid Land Cover Mapper (RLCM) was used to facilitate the photo-interpretation using Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop ArcMap software (Cotillon, Mathis, 2017). Citation: Cotillon, S.E., and Mathis, M.L., 2017, Mapping land cover through time with the Rapid Land Cover Mapper - Documentation and user manual: U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 2017-1012, 23 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20171012, Trochain, J.-L., 1957, Accord interafricain sur la definition des types de vegetation de l'Afrique tropicale: Institut d'etudes centrafricaines.