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.