Accuracy Assessment of Global Land Cover Datasets in South Korea

The national accuracy of global land cover (GLC) products is of great importance to ecological and environmental research. However, GLC products that are derived from different satellite sensors, with differing spatial resolutions, classification methods, and classification schemes are certain to show some discrepancies. The goal of this study is to assess the accuracy of four commonly used GLC datasets in South Korea, GLC2000, GlobCover2009, MCD12Q1, and GlobeLand30. First, we compared the area of seven classes between four GLC datasets and a reference dataset. Then, we calculated the accuracy of the four GLC datasets based on an aggregated classification scheme containing seven classes, using overall, producer's and user's accuracies, and kappa coefficient. GlobeLand30 had the highest overall accuracy (77.59%). The overall accuracies of MCD12Q1, GLC2000, and GlobCover2009 were 75.51%, 68.38%, and 57.99%, respectively. These results indicate that GlobeLand30 is the most suitable dataset to support a variety of national scientific endeavors in South Korea.