Global 10 m Land Use Land Cover Datasets: A Comparison of Dynamic World, World Cover and Esri Land Cover

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites have laid the foundation for global land use land cover (LULC) mapping with unprecedented detail at 10 m resolution. We present a cross-comparison and accuracy assessment of Google’s Dynamic World (DW), ESA’s World Cover (WC) and Esri’s Land Cover (Esri) products for the first time in order to inform the adoption and application of these maps going forward. For the year 2020, the three global LULC maps show strong spatial correspondence (i.e., near-equal area estimates) for water, built area, trees and crop LULC classes. However, relative to one another, WC is biased towards over-estimating grass cover, Esri towards shrub and scrub cover and DW towards snow and…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: DE-AC05, DE-AC05-76RLO1830
• B
  Battelle

  Awards: DE-AC05-76RLO1830, DE-AC05
• NF
  Norges Forskningsråd

  Award: 320042
• PN
  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  Award: DE-AC05-76RLO1830