Mapping Mexico’s land cover

As part of a scientific collaboration with the Mexican Space Agency, ESA has combined images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission to produce a detailed view of the different types of vegetation growing across the entire country. The high-resolution land-cover map combines images captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2 between 2016 and 2018.

The original map, generated with 10 m resolution imagery, is available via the Climate Change Initiative’s Land Cover 10 m viewer.

Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite constellation built for the EU’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. Each identical satellite carries a multispectral imager that can distinguish between different types of vegetation and crops. It can also be used to determine numerous plant indices such as the amounts of chlorophyll and water in leaves to monitor changes in plant health and growth. The mission has a myriad of uses, one of which is to provide information to map land cover so that changes in the way land is being used can be monitored.