The urgent need to develop a new grassland map in China: based on the consistency and accuracy of ten land cover products

Mengjing Hou; Jing Ge; Yangjing Xiu; Baoping Meng; Jie Liu; Qisheng Feng; Tiangang Liang

doi:10.1007/s11427-021-2143-3

The urgent need to develop a new grassland map in China: based on the consistency and accuracy of ten land cover products

Sci China Life Sci. 2023 Feb;66(2):385-405. doi: 10.1007/s11427-021-2143-3. Epub 2022 Aug 26.

Authors

Mengjing Hou¹, Jing Ge¹, Yangjing Xiu¹, Baoping Meng², Jie Liu¹, Qisheng Feng¹, Tiangang Liang³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, Key Laboratory of Grassland Livestock Industry Innovation, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Engineering Research Center of Grassland Industry, Ministry of Education, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China.
² Institute of Fragile Eco-Environment, Nantong University, Nantong, 226007, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, Key Laboratory of Grassland Livestock Industry Innovation, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Engineering Research Center of Grassland Industry, Ministry of Education, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China. tgliang@lzu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36040706
DOI: 10.1007/s11427-021-2143-3

Abstract

Grasslands are the most dominant terrestrial ecosystem in China, but few national grassland maps have been generated. The grassland resource map produced in the 1980s is widely used as background data, but it has not been updated for almost 40 years. Therefore, a reliable map depicting the current spatial distribution of grasslands across the country is urgently needed. In this study, we evaluated the grassland consistency and accuracy of ten land cover datasets (GLC2000, GlobCover, CCI-LC, MCD12Q1, CLUD, GlobeLand30, GLC-FCS30, CGLS-LC100, CLCD, and FROM-GLC) for 2000, 2010, and 2020 based on extensive fieldwork. We concluded that the area of these ten grassland products ranges from 107.80×10⁴ to 332.46×10⁴ km², with CLCD and MCD12Q1 having the highest area consistency. The spatial and sample consistency is highest in the regions of east-central Inner Mongolia, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and northern Xinjiang, while the distribution of southern grasslands is scattered and differs considerably among the ten products. MCD12Q1 is significantly more accurate than the other nine products, with an overall accuracy (OA) reaching 77.51% and a kappa coefficient of 0.51; CLCD is slightly less accurate than MCD12Q1 (OA=73.02%, kappa coefficient=0.45) and is more conducive to the fine monitoring and management of grassland because of its 30-meter resolution. The highest accuracy of grassland was found in the Inner Mongolia-Ningxia region and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, while the accuracy was worst in the southeastern region. In the future grassland mapping, cartographers should improve the accuracy of the grassland distribution in South China and regions where grassland is confused with forest, cropland and bare land. We specify the availability of valuable data in existing land cover datasets for China's grasslands and call for researchers and the government to actively produce a new generation of grassland maps.

Keywords: CLCD; MCD12Q1; accuracy assessment; consistency comparison; grassland; land use and land cover.

MeSH terms

China
Ecosystem*
Forests
Grassland*
Tibet