Changing landscapes: monitoring environmentally sensitive areas using satellite imagery

A Map Updating System, which uses visual interpretation of satellite imagery to update vectorized maps of land cover, has been developed to complement existing methods using aerial photography. The use of satellite imagery in a Geographic Information System allowed information from a digitized 1987 map of land cover to be used to speed up the identification of changes in land cover between arable and grassland in the Broads Environmentally Sensitive Area. Both optical and radar imagery have been successfully used to discriminate arable land from grassland. ERS radar imagery proved valuable in constructing a time series of images to distinguish between permanent and temporary grassland.