Senior geographic information specialist Malanding Jaiteh participated recently in two international workshops at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, that focused on methodologies for producing landcover maps and efforts to enhance the quality of such maps. The first, “Characterizing and Validating Global Agricultural Landcover,” took place June 13–15 and was co-hosted by IIASA and the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The second, “CalVal Workshop: Global Land Cover Validation and Accuracy Assessment for Land Cover Change and Area Estimates: Updates, Progress, Next Steps,” was held June 16–17 and organized by the Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) panel of the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) and the Working Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).
The invitation-only workshops addressed an identified need for consistent specifications for landcover maps, and ultimately, the development of a body of global reference maps. Jaiteh contributed insights into what users of the data need, not just in terms of land cover mapping but also applications of the data products, in particular, where helping identify limitations of the data set may guide accurate uses.