Comparing agricultural land-use statistics from different sources : a case study in Greece

Abstract

This paper illustrates a tool integrating the Farm Structure Survey (FSS) and an improved version of CORINE Land Cover (CLC) map as a contribution to produce reliable land-use statistics at national and regional scale. To achieve compatibility between census and CLC the present tool takes into account the FSS nomenclature and definitions, and reorganizes the 44 classes of the original CLC into 16 general classes that meet the needs of the Land Use/Cover statistics in Greece. To compare the respective surface areas of the related classes and to provide the appropriate links between certain classes of the two nomenclatures four Greek regions are used in the pilot study: Kriti, and the three prefectures of Makedonia. The linkage between the two databases shows the existing differences between the administrative areas. The developed tool is able to relate data from different sources, and to display on a map, the combined spatial statistical data along with the geographical information of the area. Thus, although the new CLC seems to provide a good mapping base, the imposed minimum mapping unit of 25 ha results in an overall underestimation of the diversity of agricultural land-uses, something which is particularly important in the case of Greece for which the average size of the farm holdings is less than 5 hectares.