Update of the Corine Land Cover Data Base in Germany

The objective of the European-wide programme CORINE Land Cover (CLC) is the generation and regular update of consistent and comparable information on land cover in Europe for environmental assessment and planning purposes. The project CORINE Land Cover 2000 (CLC2000) aims at the update of the land cover data base for the year 2000 and the mapping of land cover changes in Europe during the last decade (1990 – 2000). The mapping is done at the scale 1:100,000 according to 44 land cover and land use classes. The main data base is a set of ortho-rectified satellite scenes of Landsat-7 ETM+. The inventory is carried out by means of computer assisted image interpretation. The CLC2000 subproject in Germany is led by the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) and the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD). The paper gives an overview on the German CLC2000 project and its present status. The applied methods of mapping and updating are discussed. By means of several examples selected results are presented and some significant changes especially in urban regions are shown. The potential but also the restrictions of the present CLC2000 data for regional planning and environmental monitoring purposes are discussed in the context of other European projects like MOLAND and MURBANDY. Finally, an outlook on ongoing research activities for the automation of the interpretation process is given. * corresponding author