Geo-Wiki: An online platform for improving global land cover

Land cover derived from remotely sensed products is an important input to a number of different global, regional and national scale applications including resource assessments and economic land use models. During the last decade three global land cover datasets have been created, i.e. the GLC-2000, MODIS and GlobCover, but comparison studies have shown that there are large spatial discrepancies between these three products. One of the reasons for these discrepancies is the lack of sufficient in-situ data for the development of these products. To address this issue, a crowdsourcing tool called Geo-Wiki has been developed. Geo-Wiki has two main aims: to increase the amount of in-situ land cover data available for training, calibration and validation, and to create a hybrid global land cover map that provides more accurate land cover information than any current individual product. This paper outlines the components that comprise Geo-Wiki and how they are integrated in the architectural design. An overview of the main functionality of Geo-Wiki is then provided along with the current usage statistics and the lessons learned to date, in particular the need to add a mechanism for feedback and interaction as part of community building, and the need to address issues of data quality. The tool is located at geo-wiki.org. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.