WorldCover Viewer is a new interactive land use map produced by the European Space Agency. The map lets visitors see how land is used worldwide and in specific places. Visitors can pan and zoom to see land use for an area or use the statistics explorer tools built into the map to see land use statistics for a country, state, or province. Views of the map and associated data can be downloaded from the WorldCover Viewer.
The map represents ten categories of land use. Those categories are:
- Tree Cover
- Shrubland
- Grassland
- Cropland
- Built-up
- Bare/ Sparse Vegetation
- Snow and Ice
- Permanent Water Bodies
- Herbaceous wetland
- Mangroves
- Moss and Lichen
Applications for Education
WorldCover Viewer could be a great resource for students to use to learn about how land is used in the area around them and globally. Students might be surprised to learn how much land is or isn’t built-up in their home state or province. I can see using WorldCover Viewer as the starting place for student research into environmental challenges and concerns about land use.