Land Cover Scotland (LCS) 1988

Land Cover Scotland (LCS) 1988 was the first ever national (air-photo) census of land cover in Scotland to describe the principal features and characteristics of the countryside. It was produced by The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (now the James Hutton Institute) on behalf of Scottish Government to assist in the development and monitoring of policies affecting the state of the Scottish countryside. It was intended that the 1988 LCS be used as a baseline for monitoring change. The classification system allows for 126 land cover types to be identified as point, line or area features. An important aspect of the classification system is that it allows for mosaics of the land cover types to be identified, where the pattern of cover types was so complex that individual types could not, at the selected interpretation scale, be separated. Over 1300 mosaics are identified in the LCS dataset.
 
Citation proposal
(1992) . Land Cover Scotland (LCS) 1988. Scottish Government https://services.mspdata.eu:/geonetwork/srv/api/records/7dfaf8ce-2123-4eec-8a16-2e85fab7077d

Simple

Alternate title
LCS88
Date ( Creation )
1987-07-01
Date ( Publication )
1992-07-01
Identifier
www.gov.scot / SG_LandCoverScotland_1988

  Publisher

  Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency
notPlanned Not planned
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ( Theme )
  • Land cover
IPVS - Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary version 2
  • Land and premises , Countryside
Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
No limitations on public access
Use limitation
The following attribution statement must be used to acknowledge the source of the information: Copyright Scottish Government, contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right (insert year)
Denominator
25000
Metadata language
eng English
Topic category
  • Environment
N
S
E
W


Geographic identifier
GB-SCT

 

Date ( Revision )
2007-12-13

Supplemental Information
Reference system identifier
EPSG / OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG:27700) / 7.4
Distribution format
  • WMS (1.3.0 )

  • WFS (2.0.0 )

  • ESRI REST (1.0 )

  • ESRI Shapefile (1.0 )

OnLine resource
Land Cover Scotland 1988  

OGC View Service

OnLine resource
Land_Cover_Scotland_1988  

OGC Feature Download Service

OnLine resource
Land Cover Scotland 1988  

ESRI REST Service

OnLine resource
Land Cover  

ATOM Download Service

OnLine resource
Land Cover Scotland 1988  

ESRI Shapefile Download

Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Statement
The LCS dataset was created by defining a hierarchical land cover classification followed by the interpretation of aerial imagery to identify both single feature and mosaics of different land cover types. The classification system was developed specifically to provide information on semi-natural cover features, so that the greatest detail (at the lowest level in the hierarchy) relates to natural and management features within these cover types. LCS88 has 126 major classes. This was felt necessary to preserve the detail of the ground cover, especially in the upland or moorland areas – which cover some 80% of the land area. Mosaics, consisting of a dominant and subdominant class, were also permitted where the interpreter was unable to separate out different land covers (for instance as part of heather cycling and regeneration, patches of grass establish and then become recolonised by the heather). Some of the mosaics were very region specific and this gave rise to some 1300 classes, and 969 of them in total covered only 1% of the country. Medium scale air photography was flown for the whole of Scotland and interpreted by former soil surveyors to obtain a census map of land cover. Photos were viewed through a stereoscope, and using an acetate overlay features were drawn by hand for points, lines and areas. Area features were identified where they are greater than 10 hectares for semi-natural ground vegetation, greater than 5 hectares for built-up land, or greater than 2 hectares for woodland. A code was allocated to each feature following the agreed classification system. This information was then converted to a computer readable form by digitising against OS Pathfinder maps (1:25,000) in GIS. Lastly, the digitised data was compared to conditions on the ground to produce accuracy assessments.

Metadata

File identifier
7dfaf8ce-2123-4eec-8a16-2e85fab7077d   XML
Metadata language
eng English
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Date stamp
2018-12-27
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115:2003/19139
Metadata standard version
1.0

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