30-second degree grid land cover classification of Asia

With the development of the global economy, environmental research has become more important than ever, especially in the Asian region. The objective of this study is to produce a land cover classification dataset for the whole of Asia using the NOAA AVHRR 1-km dataset. Ground data were mainly collected from existing thematic maps which were obtained from members of the Land Cover Working Group (LCWG) of the Asian Association of Remote Sensing (AARS). Classification was mainly based on cluster analysis of the monthly ratio of surface temperature and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for seven months from April to October 1992. Additional variables, such as DEM, the maximum monthly composite NDVI in a year, and the minimum monthly composite NDVI in a year were also used in the classification processing. In order to add and improve ground data in the future, collected ground data will be published with the developed land cover dataset.