Overview Of The Global Land Cover Network Initiative (GLCN) Strategies for Land Cover Mapping

1. Overview Of The Global Land Cover Network Initiative (GLCN) Strategies for Land Cover Mapping and Monitoring John S. Latham GLCN Co-ordinator SDRN, FAO

2. Country Core Requirements Rely Heavily on Land Cover Data • For: Environmental, Food Security, and Humanitarian Programmes. • In support of :Sustainable Development and stewardship of natural resources, environmental protection, disaster mitigation. • The underlying principles are: Affirmed by UNCED Agenda 21, reconfirmed at WSSD and the General Assembly’s MillenniumDeclaration, activate through many initiatives including MA.

3. UN Core Requirements also Rely Heavily on Land Cover Data - common driving forces for harmonised information 1 NATIONAL AND INT. RESPONSIBILITIES UNDER AGENDA 21 -FAO/UNEP ESP. CHAPTER 10 & 40(INTEGRATED PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND RESOURCES & INFO FOR DECSIONS MAKERS) 2 STANDARDISTION FOR INPUT TO UNCED CONVENTIONS- CBD, CCC, CCD. 3 GLOBAL TOTAL CARBON INITIATIVE - TCI/KYOTO PROTOCOL 4 TO MEET THE GROWING DEMANDS OF INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMES FOR HARMONISATION OF TRANSBOUNDARY ISSUES- FOOD SECURITY, DESERTIFICATION, DEFORESTATION, WATERSHED MANAGEMENT ETC.

4. Poverty Education Gender Equality Child Morality Maternal Health HIV/AIDS Malaria Environment Global Partnerships Achieving the MDGs SDI Standards Professionals GIS Systems Earth Data

5. OVERVIEW GLCN The Global Land Cover Network (GLCN) initiative is the result of a common effort of FAO and UNEP to answer the need expressed by the international community for a global land cover standardized data base. The GLCN initiative is based on the recommendations of the Agenda 21 for coordinated, systematic and harmonized collection and assessment of data on land cover and environmental conditions, especially for monitoring degradation: remote sensing and Ggeographical Iinformation Systems (GIS) technologies are used. Presently, the GLCN is the first example of anoperational global initiative in the domain of geographical information. As a result of this effort and as another step towards development of a global, harmonized land cover classification and mapping strategy, with the objective to provide direction, focus and guidance for harmonization of land cover mapping and monitoring at national, regional and global levels. This initiative has been launched at the conference “Strategies for Global Land Cover Mapping and Monitoring” held in Florence 6-8 May 2002 during which a common final declaration (the Artimino declaration) was issued.

6. Enables national priorities and economic renewal. Integrated, efficient, cost-effective infrastructure Information Management Supports Empowering NSDI’s • Land administration; • Natural resource management; • Environmental management; • Land use planning and development Management Framework Custom Applicationsfor Data Access / Use SupportiveInformation Policy /Data Standards NSDI Components Computing and NetworkTechnology Structured Framework Layers Spatial, Tabular Data Capacity Building & Communications

7. A New Programme to Improve Global Land Cover Information Access A joint FAO/UNEP initiative, known as the Global Land Cover Network or GLCN Objectives:- Methods and standards to harmonize regional and local land cover information.- Develop Networks and Linkages among co-operating organizations.- Development of a high resolution global land cover data set based on a common standard.- Implementation of a distributed service to provide comparable products at global, regional, and national and lower levels.- Training, and institution-building to maximize benefits for developing countries.-Operational development and use by national stakeholders

8. UNDERSTANING OF CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF LAND COVER/USE CHANGE Land cover observations Human drivers of land use change Biophysical/biogeochemical consequences of land use change Impacts on sustainability

9. Multiple data sources Environmental suitability Socio-economics Infrastructure Land cover

10. Integration for sustainable development Areas for sustainable development

11. Spatial Information Chain KNOWLEDGE Ability to understand & explain User(s) Information Understanding INFORMATION Data organized & placed in context Information Integration Information Extraction DATA Observations & Measurements Real World Object Data Collection

12. The Need is to Organize and Turn Data into Actionable Knowledge IT ROLE Decide Perceive Compute Transfer Symbolize Sense Cognitive Domain (Actionable Knowledge) Symbolic Domain (Information) Physical Domain (Data) Understanding and Explaining Information Data Placed in Context Measurements and Observations Count Sense Measure Three Domains of Reality

13. How is FAO Supporting Geo- Information VALUE ADDED BY IT INFORMATION AGRICULTURE ENTERPRISE Actions Collaboration COGNITIVE Decisions ENHANCED FARM MANAGEMENT Relevance Knowledge Integration SYMBOLIC MEASURING& MONITORING AGRICULTURE ( PREDICIT/FORECAST) Information Meaning Data SENSORS & FIELD DATA PHYSICAL Reference: The Gartner Group

14. Global assessments Global Land Cover Scale 1:5-2,000,000 - raster based IGBP 1991 LCCS harmonisation/ translation Global Land Cover 2000- JRC at Scale1:1,000,000 - raster based GLC 2000 Global Map Georeferenced Land Cover Initiatives -Africover/Asiacove/ S.AMERICA National Scale :1:250,000-1:100,000 - vector based Member States Catchment Information System at Scale 1:50,000 - vector based Regions Local Soil Information System at Scale 1:20,000 - vector based Local Spatial planning Local Planning A Nested Land Cover System

15. Building a Global Coalition---Partnership • A number of initiatives are already in existence • No single entity at national, regional or international level can do it alone • Added-value for synergization and harmonization • Key partners: governments, industry, academic institutions, in addition to operational programmes and organizations- we invite the African community here to become an active participant in this process and to become engaged as incubators for ASIAN implementation

16. THANK YOU