Land Cover Map of Great Britain

The Land Cover Map of Great Britain is a digital map derived from the
classification of cloud-free satellite images from the American Landsat
Thematic Mapper (TM).

Seventeen key land cover classes were identified throughout Britain and,
of these, eight classes were subdivided into, for example, upland and lowland
variants, giving a total of 25 cover types.

The 25 land cover types include built-up areas, arable farmland, pastures
and forestry, together with a variety of semi-natural vegetation types.

The classes are mapped on a 25 m raster overlay of the complete land
surface of Great Britain. The data are held in digital form as a 25 m raster
overlay of the British National Grid and can be presented in a variety of
digital exchange formats.

They can be summarised by 1 km squares (or other resolutions) of the
National Grid and summary data are also held as Oracle tables.

There are a wide range of users of the Land Cover Map in organisations
concerned with environmental impact assessments, pollution control, water
resources management, policy and planning, and environmental management.

Its greatest potential can be realised through integration with other
data, such as geology, soils, climate, biological records, agricultural
statistics, and population census for use in decision support systems and
geographical information systems.