Land use is an essential component for many areas, from water management to agriculture, from the fight against desertification to that against climate change. The detection of changes in land cover allows a better understanding of the state and dynamics of natural resources and, to a certain extent, of their use. However, the legends used to describe land cover often have many inconsistencies and this limits their use and the sustainability of land cover monitoring efforts. The establishment of a common land cover classification system is one of the solutions identified to ensure consistency between maps prepared by different organizations. Also, with the establishment of an international standard for the development of land cover classification systems (ISO 19144-2), it is possible to use a national reference system and derive legends from it of land use that are interoperable. This facilitates the use of the same card for different objectives, forestry or agricultural, as well as for the assessment of ecosystem functions, the assessment biodiversity, the carbon cycle and many others.

Many land cover maps have been established for Libya, but, as in most countries the legends were developed for very specific purposes, they are not interoperable and their use for the evaluation of temporal changes is greatly limited. The government can establish a national land cover classification system, which allows interoperability and an integration, whether for local applications (for example that collected by the teams of field) or national.

The objective of this document is to present the land cover reference system for Libya. The main aim of this reference system is to provide a common framework so that experts and land cover communities can generate their own legend and classes depending on their objective in Libya. This land cover reference system is based on Land Cover Meta Language (LCML) ISO-based standards. The rules that characterize each node in LCML are controlled by a specific object-based rule that is fully documented and explained in the publication. This publication is the result of collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Libyan Centre for Remote Sensing and Space Science and University of Tripoli.