Researchers from Chiba University and Nagoya University, Japan, have developed a highly accurate land cover map for Siberia, providing insights into climate change and predictions.
Researchers from Chiba University and Nagoya University, Japan, have developed a highly accurate land cover map for Siberia, providing insights into climate change and predictions. Using advanced machine learning techniques and existing multiple land cover maps, they were able to address the significant discrepancies found in the previous datasets. Being one of the world’s most climate-sensitive regions, Siberia’s newly developed map marks a breakthrough, providing critical details crucial for understanding the region’s extreme environmental changes.
Siberia, a province located in Russia, is a significant geographical region playing a crucial role in the world’s carbon cycle. With its vast forests, wetlands, and permafrost regions (permanently frozen grounds), Siberia stores a considerable amount of carbon on a global scale. But climate change is rapidly altering Siberia’s landscape, shifting its vegetative distribution and accelerating the permafrost thaw. Classifying land cover is essential to predict future climatic changes, but accumulating land cover data in regions like Siberia is challenging due to the limited availability of ground observation data.
Read more at Chiba University
Image: Researchers use advanced machine learning techniques and multiple global land cover datasets to develop a high-precision land cover map of Siberia.(Credit: Professor Kazuhito Ichii from Chiba University, Japan)
