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Lesotho: Land cover atlas 2017–2023









FAO. 2023. Lesotho: Land cover atlas 2017–2021. Maseru. 




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    Lesotho - Land Cover Atlas 2017
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    The Lesotho Land Cover Database (LCDB) and ATLAS have been prepared in the framework of the FAO Emergency Program (OSRO/LES/401/EC): “Building Lesotho resilience through the upscale of Climate Smart Agriculture and functional DRR Land Resources Information”. The LCDB was developed in close collaboration with Lesotho Governmental Institutions including: Bureau of the Statistics (BOS), Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS), Ministry of Forestry, Range and Soil Conservation (MFRSC). The Lesotho Government supported the development of the Land Cover database providing valuable analogic and digital information. The very high resolution true color Ortho-photos of 2014 and 2004 that were provided by the Bureau of the Statistics (BOS) played a decisive role on the development of the database ensuring a very high and detailed quality and accuracy of the product. Furthermore, the Lesotho Government through, the Bureau of the Statistics and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security , supported the field survey activities, development of the land cover classification legend and validation of the LCDB with skilled experts that provided important inputs for a reliable and accurate land cover database. The Land Cover Atlas of the Lesotho provides information on the land cover distribution by Administrative boundaries and River catchment areas. The administrative unit layer as well as the water basin layer and a number of ancillary datasets are provided by the Ministry of Fores try, Range and Soil Conservation (MFRSC), Ministry of Local Government and Chieftainship Affairs (MLGCA), Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS), Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture (MTEC), Ministry of Water Affairs (MWA) and Lesotho Land Administration Authority (LAA).
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    JORDAN - Land Cover Atlas 2019
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    The Jordanian Land Cover Database and Atlas were developed under the Regional Food Security Analysis Network (RFSAN) project. The main objective of the project is to increase and improve provision of goods and services from agriculture, forestry and fisheries in a sustainable manner as well as to increase the understanding of the bio-physical conditions of land in Jordan. The Land Cover Atlas of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan provides information on the land cover distribution by sub-national administrative boundaries (governorates and districts) provided by the Royal Geographic Centre (RJGC). The Land Cover Database is compliant with the ISO\FAO standard (ISO 19144-2:2012) based on the land cover classification system (LCCS): Land Cover Meta Language (LCML). LCML was implemented to support the standardization and integration of a national land cover classification system across the world. It provides a set of standard diagnostic attributes that are independent of the scale of interpretation. Its use advocates for a more transparent and comparable way of reporting land cover information. The LCML land cover legend was designed with the software LCCSv3. The main data source includes multispectral Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 m of spatial resolution acquired from April to November 2016 and ancillary georeferenced data (land cover and land use map, vegetation cover, soil map) obtained from different institutions. Sentinel-2 imagery were pre-processed and mosaicked to provide a temporal sequence of free-cloud, calibrated images. Then, an Object-Based Image Analysis workflow was applied to segment the images into homogeneous polygons, that were interpreted according to their spectral, texture and shape characteristics supported by vegetation indices and ancillary datasets. Post-processing finally removed incoherent classifications, clipping and dissolving polygons to official boundaries. The final database comprises 1 million polygons classified according to the LCCS Legend distinguished into 34 classes (23 aggregated classes). The statistical analysis of land cover aggregated class distribution is organized into two sections: • National Land Cover Data Base (LCDB). • LCDB by governorates. This work represents a substantial contribution to understanding land cover and land processes in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and provides valuable baseline data to further monitor land changes in the future.
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    Agro-ecological atlas of the Republic of North Macedonia 2020
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    Agriculture has an important role in North Macedonia and in 2017 it accounted for 7.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the country. However, agriculture’s share of the country’s GDP has been decreasing for the past decade, and the need to improve agricultural productivity has become an important challenge. For this purpose, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy (MAFWE) with the support of FAO initiated to adapt FAO’s agro-ecological zones (AEZ) methodology to local needs in the country. The effort was undertaken by forming a wide technical working group with representatives from academia, the Hydro-Meteorological Service, State Statistics Office, and the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning. The delineation of agro-ecological zones specific to crops presents a useful preliminary evaluation of the country’s agricultural potential and provides a tool for regional and environmentally sustainable development planning. Agro-ecological zoning refers to the division of an area of land into land resource mapping units, having a unique combination of landform, soil and climatic characteristics, and/or land cover having a specific range of potentials and constraints for agricultural land use. This atlas shows the results collected during this study and the related developed maps.

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