Open and synergistic global land cover

Open and synergistic global land cover present a global land cover dataset which is available every 5 year from 1990 to 2020. The overall accuracies of land cover maps were around 75% and the accuracy for change detection was over 70%. This product also showed good similarity with the FAO and existing land cover maps. Multiple datasets were used in this study, including the FROM-GLC global land cover map in 2017, which was the most up to date and accurate land cover map among the three FROM-GLC maps in 2010, 2015 and 2017. Landsat surface reflectance dataset, The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM), ESA-CCI and three recent single-type land cover datasets. Open and synergistic land cover maps were provided for the entire world from 1990 to 2020 every 5 years. The global land cover map contains values of 1 to 10, representing cropland, forest, grassland, shrubland, wetland, water, tundra, impervious surface, bareland and ice&snow, respectively. The dataset extends from 90° N to 60° S latitude and from 180° W to 180° E longitude. The dataset can be visualized and analysed directly through Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform and it could also be exported to local equipment through GEE.