Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
land cover
Sentinel-2
Quebec
structural consistency
spectral separability
A Systematic Evaluation of the COTQ Provincial Land Cover Product: Structural Consistency, Spectral Separability, and Relative Positioning Against ESA, ESRI, and Google Products
🤖 AI Summary
研究通过结构一致性、光谱可分性等方法系统评估了COTQ土地覆盖产品，并与ESA、ESRI和Google的产品进行了对比，以支持魁北克地区的土地监测。
📝 Abstract
High-resolution land use and land cover (LULC) products derived from Sentinel-2 imagery are widely used for environmental monitoring and land management, yet their performance can vary across regions with complex ecological gradients and heterogeneous surface conditions. In Quebec, these limitations motivated the development of a provincial 10-m land-cover product, the COTQ, designed to support annual monitoring of land occupation and soil artificialisation. This study presents a systematic evaluation of the COTQ product relative to three global 10-m LULC datasets: ESA WorldCover, ESRI LandCover, and Google DynamicWorld. This paper does not introduce a new mapping methodology but focuses on analysing the behaviour and consistency of the COTQ using complementary evaluation approaches. All products are harmonized under a common legend and compared using structural indicators (object-size distributions, shape complexity, Adjusted Rand Index, and Intersection over Union), spectral separability metrics derived from Sentinel-2 reflectance data, and a targeted photo-interpretation of disagreement areas. The analysis is conducted over eight Sentinel-2 tiles selected to represent the main bioclimatic domains of Québec, from temperate and boreal forests to northern tundra environments. The results show that the COTQ exhibits structural and spectral characteristics most similar to ESA WorldCover among the reference global products, while revealing systematic differences linked to class definitions and thematic priorities, particularly for urban areas, wetlands, and rocky or cryptogamic surfaces. This multi-criteria evaluation provides an objective characterization of the COTQ product and clarifies its relative positioning with respect to existing global land-cover datasets for operational land monitoring in Québec.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Systematic Evaluation
Structural Consistency
Spectral Separability
Land Cover Product
COTQ
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