FAO Land Cover Legend Registry (LCLR)

Land cover (LC) information has been playing an important role in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Maintaining and restoring land resources can play a vital task in tackling climate change, securing biodiversity and maintaining crucial ecosystem services, while ensuring resilient livelihoods and food security. Therefore, assessing LC is essential and is one of the 14 fundamental geospatial data themes of the United Nations according to United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

In this context, there are many different Land Cover Legend (LCL) and LC classification schemes used to classify LC. However, in many practical situations, the rigidity / vagueness of traditional LC classifications based on names and relative text description limits the interoperability between LCL and contribute to the inconsistency of LC information at regional and global levels. Therefore, there is a need to develop a platform with updated LC datasets along with harmonized LCL to address regional and worldwide land monitoring requirements and environmental issues.

As a part of this effort, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed a Land Cover Legend Registry (LCLR). This open source web-catalogue is the first world’s largest repository of harmonized national, regional, and global LC legends with detailed information of LCL class and is linked with original LC datasets.