Automatic procedures for the identification of changes in the actual use of agricultural land

Automatic procedures for identification of land cover changes using various remote sensing data have unexploited potential to improve the quality of data on the actual land use of the agricultural and the forest land. The usage of automated processes for classification of land use changes can also contribute to the efficiency of the maintenance procedures. The proposed project will contribute to up-to-date status and quality of the actual land use to reduce irregularities in the agricultural beneficiaries reports for individual measures of the common agricultural policy.

This proposal for a research project is based on the use of alternative data sources and partially automated maintenance procedures to ensure the effective updating of the actual land cover use of agricultural and forest land. We expect to focus on automatic identification of key changes in actual land use of agricultural and forest land: the reforestation of agricultural land, the urban area growth on farmlands, the deforestation in forests, orchards and vineyards. The results of the automatic classification of changes will be designed so, that they can be directly used by the end users in the process of actual land use updating and in the control measures under the common agricultural policy.

The basic goals of the project are:

- explore the use of alternative satellite and airborne remote sensing data for use in the process of determining eligibility to obtain direct payments,

- to develop a methodology for the automatic identification of changes in the actual land use,

- design the layer of spatial changes in the existing updating methodology of the actual land use with the aim to improve the up-to-date status of the actual land use as a primary source for determining eligibility for obtaining direct payments.

The final goal of the project is to produce "Operational instructions for the use of alternative remote sensing sources and the automatic identification procedure of the land use changes in the updating process of the actual land use of agricultural and forest land". In these instructions the methodology will be described how the automatic processing of alternative data sources can be incorporated in updating procedure of the actual land use of agricultural and forest land.