Reconstruction of land cover distribution for mid-twentieth century in Ebro basin

The analysis of historical land use and land cover evolution requires available cartography. In this paper, we provided a reconstruction of land cover distribution for mid-twentieth century of part of the Ebro basin. This reconstruction is carried out using three methods: (i) previously available cartographic sources, (ii) land cover reconstruction by data extrapolation in some areas where land cover surface is like other with land cover data availability, and (iii) manual digitization based on 1956–57 orthophotography. As a result, we provide land cover cartography for 71.7% of the study area and the estimated land cover distribution of data for the rest 28.3%. There is a lack of historical land cover data for the Ebro basin We provide a land cover cartography and distribution data of the mid-twentieth century in the upper and middle Ebro basin The reconstruction of land cover data has been made following a mixed methodology based on existing cartography and data contribution, the extrapolation of homogeneous land cover distribution areas and manual digitization