Retrieving land cover information from MERIS and MODIS Data: a comparative study for landscape characterization in Portugal

This is a preliminary study in the framework of an ongoing research work that aims at comparing the aptitude of MERIS and MODIS images for land cover mapping at regional scale. Overall and per class accuracies achieved with a Maximum Likelihood classification of MODIS and MERIS images acquired during August 2005, are used as a measurement of their adequacy for land cover characterization in Portugal. Attained results show that differences in spatial and spectral resolutions of used images do not produce overly disparities in land cover classes´ discrimination. Still, the separation between such numerous land cover classes is hampered by landscape fragmentation of the territory at such spatial resolution.