Quantifying and modelling decay in forecast proficiency indicates the limits of transferability in land-cover classification

1. The ability to provide reliable projections for the current and future distribution patterns of land-covers is fundamental if we wish to protect and manage our diminishing natural resources. Two inter-related revolutions made map productions feasible at unprecedented resolutions- the availability of high-resolution remotely-sensed data and the development of machine-learning algorithms. However, the ground-truth data needed for training models is in most cases spatially and temporally clustered. Therefore, map production requires extrapolation of models from one place to another and the uncertainty cost of such extrapolation is rarely explored. In other words, we focus mainly on projections, and less on quantifying how reliable they are. 2. Following the concept of ‘forecast horizon’, we suggest that the predictability of land-cover classification models should be methodologically explored with quantitative tools as a continuum against distances measured along multiple dimensions. Fo...