Land Cover Mapping of Iceland and Southern Greenland Global Land Cover 2000 S. Bartalev (JRC EC), V. Egorov (IKI RAN) and E. Bartholomé (JRC EC)

Features of regions’ environment and land cover  Duration of vegetation season is extremely short and does not exceed three months  Vegetation is mainly presented by tundra type plants adapted to severe climate  Land cover is highly degraded as result of intensive human impact  Volcanic activity results in extensive lava fields and specific atmospheric conditions  Glaciers and permanent snow are significant components of the land cover

Link to Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map  Map legend and classes definitions are adopted  Greenland land cover map is involved as reference data  Iceland land cover is not completed in the CAVM

Iceland Vegetation Map Scale 1:  Iceland Vegetation Map was used as a reference data  Correspondence of the map legend classes to the CAVM definitions were taken into account

SPOT 4 - VEGETATION data  Both standard data products S1 and S10, including spectral channels and NDVI, for the year 2000 were investigated  Initial data set covers whole year, but because of low Sun elevation the data products contain nonzero values for the period from March until October only  Angular dependence of reflectance properties were not taken into account

Methodological approach  Detection of pixels contaminated by clouds, non-permanent snow/ice and defective SWIR detectors  Synthesis of spectral channels' mosaics for certain time intervals with use of non- contaminated data only  Land cover types classification (hybrid supervised and unsupervised approach) using mosaics of spectral channels

Signatures of the land cover classes and clouds : NDSI and RED-channel bi-dimensional space Snow/Ice Clouds Water Vegetation Red channel NDSI

Contaminated pixels detection - the mean of Step 1: Detection of the pixels related to snow Step 2: Detection of the pixels contaminated by clouds Step 3: Detection of the pixels contaminated by defective SWIR detectors (two iterations) - reflectance in the Blue, Red and SWIR channels - standard deviation of, where

Estimation of the time window for mosaics' synthesis  Snow cover is present most of the time during the year  Vegetation growing season is nearly ten decades

Summer mosaics of Iceland derived from S1 and S10 products derived from S1 products derived from S10 products SWIR NIR Red Period considered is June-August of 2000

Iceland‘s monthly mosaics derived from S1 products June July August SWIR NIR Red

Land Cover Map legend Barren tundra Dry to wet barren regions with sparse, lichens, mosses, scattered herbs Prostrate shrub tundra Dry to moist tundra with patchy dwarfed or semi-erect shrubs <15 cm tall, sedges and lichens are also common Sedge tundra Moist tundra dominated by sedges with dwarf and erect shrubs mostly <40 cm tall, mosses are abundant Dwarf-shrub tundra Tundra regions dominated by erect shrubs mostly < 40 cm tall Low-Shrub tundra Tundra regions dominated by erect shrubs mostly > 40 cm, but < 2 m tall Wetlands Wetland complexes dominated by sedges, grasses and mosses, erect shrubs are also common Bare soil and rock Never has vegetation cover of any kind Permanent snow/ice Snow/ice present throughout the year Water bodies Open water fresh or salt including seas, lakes, reservoirs and rivers Urban Buildings, roads and other structures of anthropogenic origin

Land cover classification  unsupervised classification of Iceland with referencing to Vegetation Map of Iceland  supervised classification of Greenland by using Iceland labeled clusters map reference signatures  merging of Iceland and Greenland labeled clusters into thematic classes Greenland monthly mosaics Reference clusters’ signatures Unsupervised classification Island labeled clusters map Supervised classification Greenland labeled classes map Land Cover Map Iceland monthly mosaics Merging into thematic classes Reference Vegetation Map of Iceland

The land cover of Southern Greenland and Iceland

The land cover of Iceland

Statistic of land covered classes Land type Iceland terrestrial covering (%) Southern Greenland terrestrial covering (%) Barren tundra 27,75,8 Prostrate shrub tundra 9,22,6 Sedge tundra 28,23,7 Dwarf-shrub tundra 3,7<1 Low-Shrub tundra 3,7<1 Wetlands 5<1 Bare soil and rock 10,9<1 Permanent snow/ice 11,587,8

Conclusions  Essential advantage of S1 data product in comparison to S10 data productfor land cover mapping over Iceland and Greenland was demonstrated  Hybrid of unsupervised and supervised classification approach for Iceland and Southern Greenland land cover mapping was applied to cover the lack of reference data  Interaction with CAVM project and feedback from users of the product is expected to examine and improve quality of land mapping if necessary