Scale-dependent biases in systematic land cover maps undermine freshwater ecological assessment
Iñaki Fernández de Larrea, Jon González-Ibarzabal, Aitor Bastarrika, Aitor Larrañaga · 2026
Read Scale-dependent biases in systematic land cover maps undermine freshwater ecological assessment by Iñaki Fernández de Larrea, Jon González-Ibarzabal, Aitor Bastarrika, Aitor Larrañaga (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13574915.txt.
Description
Iñaki Fernández de Larrea and co-authors warn that the maps ecologists trust for river health bend the truth depending on scale, in a 2026 study. Land cover around streams governs water flow, nutrients, and habitat, so assessments lean on official land cover maps. The team studied five small headwater catchments in protected areas of northern Spain. They rebuilt forty years of land cover, from 1984 to 2023, from satellite images with their own supervised classification.
Their reconstruction was then compared with the standard CORINE maps at catchment and streamside scales. The official product's distortions changed with scale and setting, the comparison showed, enough to mislead ecological assessment. Machine-classified satellite records offered more accurate and consistent coverage over time. The authors' message to agencies: audit the map before building policy on it, especially near water.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Iñaki Fernández de Larrea, Jon González-Ibarzabal, Aitor Bastarrika, Aitor Larrañaga |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 40 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |