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Uncertainties in land use data
1Institute for Regional Development, University of Castilla La Mancha, Albacete, Spain
2Department of Geography, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Abstract. This paper deals with the description and assessment of uncertainties in gridded land use data derived from Remote Sensing observations, in the context of hydrological studies. Land use is a categorical regionalised variable returning the main socio-economic role each location has, where the role is inferred from the pattern of occupation of land. There are two main uncertainties surrounding land use data, positional and categorical. This paper focuses on the second one, as the first one has in general less serious implications and is easier to tackle. The conventional method used to asess categorical uncertainty, the confusion matrix, is criticised in depth, the main critique being its inability to inform on a basic requirement to propagate uncertainty through distributed hydrological models, namely the spatial distribution of errors. Some existing alternative methods are reported, and finally the need for metadata is stressed as a more reliable means to assess the quality, and hence the uncertainty, of these data.
Discussion Paper (PDF, 1964 KB) Interactive Discussion (Closed, 5 Comments) Final Revised Paper (HESS)
Citation: Castilla, G. and Hay, G. J.: Uncertainties in land use data, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 3, 3439-3472, 2006. Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager
