Using CORINE land cover and the point survey LUCAS for area estimation

CORINE land cover 2000 (CLC2000) is a European land cover map produced by photo-interpretation of Landsat ETM+ images. Its direct use for area estimation can be strongly biased and does not generally report single crops. CLC areas need to be calibrated to give acceptable statistical results. LUCAS (land use/cover area frame survey) is a point survey carried out in 2001 and 2003 in the European Union (EU15) on a systematic sample of clusters of points. LUCAS is especially useful for area estimation in geographic units that do not coincide with administrative regions, such as set of coastal areas defined with a 10 km buffer. Some variance estimation issues with systematic sampling of clusters are analysed. The contingency table obtained overlaying CLC and LUCAS gives the fine scale composition of CLC classes. Using CLC for post-stratification of LUCAS is equivalent to the direct calibration estimator when the sampling units are points. Stratification is easier to adapt to a scheme in which the sampling units are the clusters of points used in LUCAS 2001/2003. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.