Currently, there are several data sets on regional, national and global scales with information on land use and land cover that aim to support a large number of applications, including the management of natural resources, climate change and its impacts, and biodiversity conservation. These data products are generated using different approaches and methodologies, which present information about different classes of the earth’s surface, such as forests, agricultural plantations, among others. Initiatives that generate land use and land cover maps normally develop their own classification system, with different nomenclatures and meanings of the classes used.
As more data on land use and land cover are made available, there are also greater variations in the class definitions of these maps. Significant obstacles arise in the joint use of these data. It demands great effort from researchers, students and specialists to carry out comparative analyzes and validations of different maps of land use and cover and with different ones that have different classification systems. There are several studies and techniques that aim to verify the similarity between classes in order to obtain harmonized classification systems and thus carry out joint analyzes of different mapping products.
In this context, the Land Cover Classification System Web Service (LCCS-WS) aims to provide a simple interface to access the various classification systems in use and their respective classes. Therefore, this service proposes a representation for the classification systems and provides an API to access the classes and their symbolization. It is also possible to establish mappings between classes of different systems.
If you want to know more about LCCS service, please, take a look at its specification.
To install the development version of rlccs, run the following
commands:
# load necessary libraries
library(devtools)
install_github("brazil-data-cube/rlccs")Importing rlccs package:
library(rlccs)
library(magrittr) # for pipe (%>%) in examplesThe following are an overview of some operations implemented by rlccs:
| LCCS-WS operations | rlccs functions |
|---|---|
/classification_systems |
classification_systems() |
/classification_systems/{system_id}/classes |
classes() |
/classification_system/{system_id}/styles/{style_format_id} |
styles() |
/mappings/{system_id_source}/{system_id_target} |
mappings() |
These functions can be used to retrieve information from a LCCS-WS service.
The code bellow list the available classification system of the LCCS-WS of the Brazil Data Cube project of the Brazilian National Space Research Institute INPE.
lccs("https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/") %>%
classification_systems() %>%
get_request()
#> [[1]]
#> [[1]]$authority_name
#> [1] "INPE"
#>
#> [[1]]$description
#> [1] "Brazil Data Cube Project "
#>
#> [[1]]$id
#> [1] 1
#>
#> [[1]]$links
#> [[1]]$links[[1]]
#> [[1]]$links[[1]]$href
#> [1] "https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/classification_systems/1"
...In the code bellow, we get the metadata of a specific classification system:
lccs("https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/") %>%
classification_systems(system_id = 2) %>%
get_request()
#> $authority_name
#> [1] "INPE"
...
#> $links[[6]]
#> $links[[6]]$href
#> [1] "https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/"
#>
#> $links[[6]]$rel
#> [1] "root"
#>
#> $links[[6]]$title
#> [1] "API landing page."
#>
#> $links[[6]]$type
#> [1] "application/json"
...
This example shows the classes of a specific classification system:
lccs("https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/") %>%
classification_systems(system_id = 2) %>%
classes() %>%
get_request()
#> [[1]]
#> [[1]]$href
#> [1] "https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/classification_systems/2/classes"
...
#>
#>
#> [[4]]
#> [[4]]$href
#> [1] "https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/"
#>
#> [[4]]$rel
#> [1] "root"
#>
#> [[4]]$title
#> [1] "API landing page"
#>
#> [[4]]$type
#> [1] "application/json"
#>
#>
#> [[5]]
#> [[5]]$href
#> [1] "https://brazildatacube.dpi.inpe.br/dev/lccs/classification_systems/2/classes/51"
#>
...Copyright (C) 2021 INPE.
R client for LCCS-WS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the MIT License; see LICENSE file for more details.