West Africa Land Use/Land Cover Harmonisation Task Force for ECOWAS

Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) Mapping is key for natural resource assessment, monitoring, planning and management. Recent technical advancement in remote sensing and Geographical Information System has the ability to tackle complexities of land cover. However, inconsistency and non-interoperability between the products and platforms remain one of the biggest challenges. In this regard, regional partners, such as SERVIR-West Africa, Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations (FAO-UN), the Agrometeorology, Hydrology and Meteorology (AGRHYMET) Regional Center, and the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), aim to support and harmonise land cover mapping and monitoring through the establishment of a regional land representation system and support to land cover monitoring activities. It consists of identifying and collecting relevant datasets, legends, class documentation, and land cover-related initiatives using internationally recognised land cover standards as well as tools such as the Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) which provides a consistent framework for classifying, mapping and harmonising land cover in the region. Here, a set of exemplary use cases are presented to demonstrate existing applications of LULC in West Africa. Furthermore, we present a set of steps to identify the constraints related to the identified legends, highlight the legends to be considered, and prepare the basic schema for the classification system that describe the path forward.