Earthdefine, a provider of high resolution spatial data products, has released the first high resolution land cover dataset for California. The California SpatialCover Land Cover product is based on 2012 aerial imagery and provides spatially explicit information at 1 meter resolution for six land cover classes – trees, impervious, bare, water, herbaceous, and shrubs. The dataset has a resolution that is 30 times higher than previously available state-level land cover datasets for California. This allows users to accurately measure and understand land cover at regional and local levels, especially in mixed urban environments.
Earthdefine has also released the California SpatialCover Tree Canopy and the California SpatialCover Impervious layers as stand-alone datasets for users who are primarily interested in cost effective solutions for mapping tree cover or built-up land. The tree canopy dataset supports various applications for environmental assessment, urban tree canopy mapping, carbon storage measurement, wildfire risk assessment, air quality modeling etc. Earthdefine has showcased some web maps that show Sacramento’s Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) aggregated by different geographic regions, to illustrate the use of tree cover data for understanding a city’s urban forest at different spatial scales. This kind of data mapping can help city planners in assessing and setting measurable goals to achieve desired outcomes for urban tree cover.
The impervious product classifies impermeable surfaces like roads, driveways, buildings, sidewalks, etc. that prevent rainwater seepage into the ground. This dataset provides a unique source for understanding stormwater flows, urban heat islands, assessing non-point source pollution, etc. To illustrate one such application, Earthdefine has shared web maps created using the SpatialCover California data showing impervious cover for Los Angeles county and potential impacts on aquatic systems based on the amount of impermeable land cover within watersheds.
Earthdefine’s proprietary Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) platform enables it to produce high resolution land cover products over large regions. The California land cover product follows the release of the SpatialCover Land Cover data for Indiana. Earthdefine will continue to grow its data offering by expanding the SpatialCover data footprint to cover more states over the next year by building on the best available orthoimagery and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data.
For more information on Earthdefine products, please visit www.earthdefine.com. Contact: Vikalpa Jetly, vikalpa@earthdefine.com, 1-800-579-5916