A circa 2010 global land cover reference dataset from commercial high resolution satellite data

The data are 475 thematic land cover raster’s at 2m resolution. Land cover classification was to the land cover classes: Tree (1), Water (2), Barren (3), Other Vegetation (4) and Ice & Snow (8). Cloud cover and Shadow were sometimes coded as Cloud (5) and Shadow (6), however for any land cover application would be considered NoData. Some raster’s may have Cloud and Shadow pixels coded or recoded to NoData already. Commercial high-resolution satellite data was used to create the classifications. Usable image data for the target year (2010) was acquired for 475 of the 500 primary sample locations, with 90% of images acquired within ±2 years of the 2010 target. The remaining 25 of the 500 sample blocks had no usable data so were not able to be mapped. Tabular data is included with the raster classifications indicating the specific high-resolution sensor and date of acquisition for source imagery as well as the stratum to which that sample block belonged. Methods for this classification are described in Pengra et al. (2015). A 1-stage cluster sampling design was used where 500 (475 usable), 5 km x 5 km sample blocks were the primary sampling units (note; the nominal size was 5km x 5km blocks, but some have deviations in dimensions due only partial coverage of the sample block with usable imagery). Sample blocks were selected using stratified random sampling within a sample frame stratified by a modification of the Köppen Climate/Vegetation classification and population density (Olofsson et al., 2012). Secondary sampling units are each of the classified 2m pixels of the raster. This design satisfies the criteria that define a probability sampling design and thus serves as the basis to support rigorous design-based statistical inference (Stehman, 2000).