LCA stands for Land Cover Analysis and is used to provide an up to date, digital overview of what covers the surface of our earth split out into 10 key land cover classes. The LCA is often the first step in the site selection process for renewable energy developers looking to scan large areas ahead of zooming in on suitable sites. A Spottitt LCA can be used to automatically generate a Roughness Analysis and a Greenfield Analysis.

When monitored over time, LCAs can be used to track and visualize changes to the world around us such as increased agricultural land due to irrigation, urbanization, deforestation, loss of wetlands etc.

A Spottitt LCA has 10m resolution, is derived from 2 recent satellite images, and takes between 8-24 hours to generate for any location globally. See full product specifications below.

This is part of an LCA done in Thailand. View the full analysis and imagery used to generate it in Spottitt here.

Product Details

Coverage – global

Source Imagery – self-service LCA analyses can be generated either from a SPOT/Landsat image pair or a Sentinel 2/Sentinel 2 image pair. The Landsat satellites provide a new image every where in the world every 15 days and Sentinel 2 every 5 days. Through the Spottitt geoportal you can search these sources, select the perfect pair of images (location, date, % cloud and %snow cover) and set your LCA analysis running. You will be informed by email and notification within Spottitt the moment your analysis is ready.

LCA analysis resolution – 6m if based on SPOT/Landsat image pair, or 10m if based on Sentinel 2/Sentinel 2 image pair.

Minimum Mapping Unit – 10 pixles. This means that all polygons are 10 pixels or more in size.

Viewing your LCA anlaysis and source imagery – Interactively via the Spottitt geoportal, no special GIS software required.

Editing your LCA anlaysis – polygon class allocation and polygon deletion, addition and outline editing can be done via the Spottitt geoportal, no special GIS software required.

Standard LCA anlaysis legend – 10 key land cover classes.

Vegetated – Areas that have been identified as vegetation by the algorithm but haven’t been classified into any of the vegetated categories below.

Grassland – Areas dominated by grasses. This can vary from improved grassland to unimproved grassland and heathers.

Woodland – Areas of land mostly covered by broadleaf and coniferous woodland. Generally areas wholly covered by canopy, not areas of scattered trees.

Wetland – areas of saturated vegetation or marshland, found in low lying areas. Ranges from coastal mangroves to areas of peatbog in upland environments.

Agricultural land – cultivated land dominated by seasonal crops (excludes pasture). These areas are dominated by seasonal change during harvest.

Scrubland – Areas of sparse vegetation, mainly found in arid areas. This is a transition class between grassland and non-vegetated.

Water – Large areas of open water – either terrestrial (lakes & large rivers) or marine. Wider rivers are detected but the minimum mapping unit is too coarse to detect streams.

Urban fabric – Most of the land is covered by artificial surfaces, structures and transport networks. This encompasses inner cities and city centres. Closely related to the CORINE class Continuous urban fabric.

Non-vegetated – Areas of no / very little vegetation. This can range from bare soil, littoral sediments to bare rock. This class also encompasses mineral extraction sites.

No Data – Areas of the source image that were covered in cloud, cloud shadow or hill shadow and for which no classification can be made because the land cover is obscured, or too dark.

Exporting your LCA anlaysis and source imagery – all Spottitt anlayses can be downloaded in .shp file format for easy export to GSI software packages and .dxf for export to AutoCAD. SPOT, Landsat and Sentinel 2 source imagery can be downloaded in .tif raster format. You can also export what you see in the Spottitt geoportal with legend for inclusion in reports in many formats including .jpg, .doc, .pdf and more.