The Living Earth Handbook
A Standardised Global Land Cover Framework
[Living Earth](https://livingearthhub.org) is a science-driven, open-source Earth Observation (EO) framework designed to support standardised, scalable, and transparent mapping of land cover worldwide. Grounded in internationally accepted classification principles, it enables consistent interpretation of landscapes from satellite data to inform sustainable development planning, monitoring, and reporting.
Why Living Earth matters?
Land cover — the physical and biological cover on Earth’s surface such as vegetation types, water bodies, bare soil, or built environments — is a fundamental indicator of environmental state and change. Routine, high-quality land cover information is essential for tracking global and national progress toward environmental goals, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, most existing Earth Observation data (e.g., analysis-ready data from satellites) do not, by themselves, provide standardized land cover products at national scales. Different methods, semantics, and classifications across countries make it difficult to compare or benchmark progress. Living Earth addresses that gap.
A Global Framework Based on FAO LCCS
At the core of Living Earth is the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Land Cover Classification System (FAO LCCS) — a globally recognised, semantically robust taxonomy for land cover. Living Earth implements a fully operational version of FAO LCCS that is:
- Optimised for Earth Observation data: It has been adapted to work with multiple satellite sources and national EO infrastructures.
- Flexible yet consistent: Modifications have been made to environmental descriptors and classification hierarchies to ensure logic, scalability, and applicability even with limited data inputs.
- Open-source and FAIR-compliant: The software is public and designed to follow FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) data principles to encourage broad adoption. This implementation allows Living Earth to generate globally comparable land cover maps that can be used in policy, research, and sustainable land management.
How it works?
Living Earth uses “environmental descriptors” — measurable or classifiable attributes (e.g., vegetation cover, water persistence) derived primarily from satellite data — as inputs. These descriptors feed into the LCCS hierarchy to produce detailed land cover classifications that are:
- Scalable in space and time, enabling repeatable mapping workflows.
- Applicable at national and continental scales, with demonstrated implementations in countries such as Australia and Wales.
- Capable of supporting change detection, allowing assessment of land cover dynamics over years or decades.
Applications and Impact
Living Earth is a powerful tool for governments, environmental agencies, researchers, and policymakers who require robust landscape data for:
- SDG reporting and planning — especially indicators related to land, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.
- National monitoring systems — generating operational annual land cover maps using existing data infrastructures.
- Landscape change analysis — identifying trends such as deforestation, urban expansion, and habitat shifts across time.
Open, Collaborative, and Future-oriented?
Living Earth is not just software — it’s a platform for global collaboration. Its open design supports extensions, plug-ins, and evolving environmental descriptors, making it adaptable for new sensors, regions, and ecosystem questions. The framework’s evolution continues through international partnerships, national implementations, and community contributions.
What is this book about?
This is a 1-hour tutorial that can be used to teach or as self-paced learning.
How to cite this book?
If you use this handbook on your work, please use this reference:
Gregory Giuliani, Richard Lucas, Carole Planque, Sébastien Chognard (2026). The Living Earth Handbook. University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland. Online book available at: XXX DOI: XXX
License
This hanbook is licensed as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) by Creative Commons. Living Earth is licensed under Apache 2.0.