The Production of Finnish Corine Land Cover 2000 Classification

CORINE Land Cover is an Europeanwide land cover and land use classification which is based in most countries on visual interpretation of satellite images. The new CORINE2000 classification of Finland is based automated interpretation of satellite images and data integration with existing digital map data. Satellite images are used in estimation of continuous variables describing vegetation type and coverage, as well as in updating map data. Continuous land cover variables were transformed into discrete CORINE classes by thresholding there variables according to class descriptions in CORINE nomenclature. The output of Finnish CLC2000 project consists of calibrated IMAGE2000 mosaic, national CORINE classification (25 m raster) which is generalized and vectorized to European CORINE classification. According to the first validation utilization of non-standard, automated data production approach together with exploitation of existing digital map data was proved to be successful in Finnish conditions.