CORINE Land Cover 2006 for Continental Portugal

At level 1 of the nomenclature the main changes occur from classes: 2 and 3 to 1; 2 and 3
to 5; 3 to 2; and 2 to 3. These changes represent the growth of urban areas, the
construction of new artificial dams and lakes, and the conversion of natural to agricultural
areas and vice-versa. Within class 3, the changes from classes 311, 312 or 313 to 324,
and vice-versa, are the most representative ones in terms of area, showing the dynamics
in the Portuguese forest sector. The large area corresponding to occurrences of forest
fires also has an important influence in this dynamics. Regarding agricultural areas, the
classes that changed most were 211 and 244, often converted to new forest plantations
(class 324). Table 11 shows the top-10 level-3 changes in terms of area.
CORINE Land Cover 2006 for Continental Portugal 22
Caetano et al., 2009
Table 11 - Top-10 level-3 changes in Continental Portugal between 2000 and 2006.
Change Area (ha)
312-324 198404
311-324 157577
313-324 75470
324-311 57199
324-312 33626
334-324 25351
211-324 25033
324-313 12272
324-334 11808
244-324 11411
3.2 Revi Revision Revi Revision
sion of of the the original original CLC2000 CLC2000-PT
CLC2000 PT
As a result of the revision of the original CLC2000-PT database (see Figure 13), 7,8% of
the area of Continental Portugal were corrected for geometric and thematic errors.
In view of analysing which region of the territory was subjected to more corrections, the
original and revised CLC2000-PT databases were intersected with the level-3 NUTS
(Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) for Continental Portugal. Figure 14 shows
the percentage of corrections made to the original CLC2000-PT database per NUTS III.
“Minho/Lima”, “Beira Interior Norte”, “Grande Lisboa” and “Alentejo Central” were the most
corrected NUTS. The Centre and North-Interior were the regions of the territory with
fewer corrections. Table 12 shows the area differences per class between the revised and
the original CLC2000-PT databases. Classes 423, 332, 333, 133 and 112 were
significantly corrected relatively to their original area. This doesn’t mean necessarily
though that they correspond to the major part of the corrected area in relation to the total
area of Continental Portugal. In fact, classes that occupy a larger part of the territory are
likely to be subjected to more corrections than less represented classes. This was the case
with 112, 211, 311, 322 and 324, which were the classes responsible for the major part
of the overall improvements.