PROJECT TITLE :

South America Land Use and Land Cover Assessment and Preliminary Analysis of Their Impacts on Regional Atmospheric Modeling Studies

ABSTRACT:

Data provided by two important sources of knowledge on land use and land cowl (LULC), MODIS-2009 and GLOBCOVER-2009, were analyzed for South America so as to assess variations connected to their application in numerical modeling studies. Even though on a South American basis, the two databases showed a Pearson correlation coefficient higher than eighty fivep.c, on a regional analysis, the correlation stayed among the range of zeropercent-100%, relying on the territorial unit analyzed. Vital differences were observed in most of the land cover categories, with solely forested areas presenting a sensible level of agreement. In terms of territorial units, only areas in the Amazon region, where forest cover is predominant, showed vital correlation levels. Crops and urban classes presented the best variations between the 2 analyzed files. Results of meteorological simulations indicated that such observed discrepancies will be able to cause strong impacts on modeling eventualities and vital bias on simulated variables, being a crucial feature for weather and climate forecast and diagnostic.