Land Cover Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Land cover refers to the actual covering of the surface of the earth at any of its points. This includes plant life such as grasses, trees and forest cover, the sand of the desert, or the concrete and asphalt of developed areas. It is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations as “the observed (bio)physical cover on the earth’s surface.” It should be distinguished from land use, which explains what commercial or agricultural purpose to which a part of the earth’s surface is being put, but the two may coincide in many cases.

It is estimated that of approximately 13,400 million hectares of dry land in the world, 3,325 million are suitable for cultivation and a further 156 million are used for urban infrastructure. Meanwhile, 774 million hectares are still under forest. These numbers are dwarfed in terms of raw size by water cover, which is approximately 70 percent of the total global land cover.

Many systems exist to classify different types of land cover, with two principal areas of difference being hierarchical versus nonhierarchical systems and a priori versus a posteriori systems. Hierarchical systems allow for subdivisions within broader categories while nonhierarchical systems tend to treat each separate type of land cover as a unique phenomenon. A priori systems posit a finite number of possible land cover types and then maps the ground to determine the extent to which each of these occurs, if necessary fitting observations into an existing scheme; a posteriori schemes, on the other hand, conduct mapping activities first and then seek to identify separable types of land cover, irrespective of whether they were anticipated or not.

Determining which scheme is most useful in any particular situation depends on balancing the need for inclusiveness with avoiding unnecessary complexity. The enormous expansion of computing power and computer memory available to scientists means that new and more sophisticated land cover mapping schemes are consistently being introduced.

Land cover is determined by mapping and, in the modern world, sophisticated satellite-based mapping systems that can be used for transmitting scanned data into computers directly through digital means. Since the time taken to complete full mapping activities can be extensive, completely up-to-date figures can be difficult to obtain, especially considering the rapidity with which land cover can change.

Many aspects of the classification of land cover are controversial in that they impact zoning regulations and the ability to develop land commercially. The extent to which commercial development is permitted to vary land cover is generally regulated by state-level controls but there may be some unregulated and unpoliced changes as well.

The form of existing land cover and the degree to which it is permissible to change this has considerable importance for opportunities to obtain commercial gain from the land. Hence, zoning controls and supervision are highly contested issues in most countries.

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