Defining LUC schemes

Defining land use/cover classes

Before starting to map land cover classes using Sentinel-2 satellite images we need clear definitions and a classification scheme. An example for a hierarchical land use and land cover (LUC) classification scheme is the European Urban Atlas. The scheme defines 5 meta classes where the class 1. Artificial surfaces has many sub classes as shown in figure A.

Figure A:LUC classification scheme of the European Urban Atlas

Figure B: LUC classes for Göttingen

The specification of other meta classes is not as detailed. If we are more interested in forest and open area classes we need to adapt and modify this scheme. On the lowest level not all classes defined in the European Urban Atlas do also appear in the surroundings of Göttingen (figure B). In addition we need to consider the phenolgical development of vegetation at specific acquisiton dates and to specify more classes which can possibly be identified in multispectral feature space of the satellite image. An example of an adapted simplified scheme is shown in the table below.

MC ID	MC info	C ID	C info	RGB code
1	Artificial surfaces	11	Built-up	230-0-77
2	Agricultural	22	Arable land	255-255-168
2	Agricultural	23	Bare soil	253-191-168
2	Agricultural	24	Pasture	230-230-77
3	Natural and semi-natural areas	31	Broad leaved tree cover	128-255-0
3	Natural and semi-natural areas	32	Coniferous tree cover	0-166-0
5	Water	51	Water	128-242-230
6	Miscellaneous	61	Cloud	255-255-255
6	Miscellaneous	62	Cloud shadow	100-50-0
6	Miscellaneous	63	Unclassified	0-0-0