Calculate land extent accounts tutorial

This tutorial shows how to use the LUCI Calculate land extent accounts tool. Data from the Rio Grande basin (Brazil) is used to illustrate how the tool works.

The tool has two options for the land cover input:

Both options are covered separately on this page.

One shapefile with multiple fields

Download the Rio Grande data

Unzip the file when you've downloaded the data, but do not unzip any zip files within this folder as they will be used as they are in this tutorial.

  1. Open the Calculate land extent accounts page in your browser.
  2. Ensure that the option One shapefile with multiple fields is selected.

    Land extent account user interface
  3. Click the Choose File button and choose the RioGrande_lclu.zip file. This zip file contains the land cover information for the Rio Grande Basin for two different years.
  4. In the Shapefile containing opening year land extent data field, enter: uso2000. This is the land cover during the year 2000.
  5. In the Shapefile containing closing year land extent data field, enter: uso2016. This is the land cover during the year 2016.
  6. In the Land cover table with labels field, click the Choose File button and choose the RioGrande_Table.zip file.
  7. In the Land cover code column field, enter: LCLU_code. This is the land cover classification field in the above table. 
  8. In the Land cover name column field, enter: LC_CLASS. This is the classification name field in the above table.
  9. Click the Calculate land extent accounts button.

This produces the land extent account shapefiles over the Rio Grande basin as shown below. Two shapefiles are produced: Opening year land extent and Closing year land extent. These layers can be alternately viewed by toggling the visibility icon (icon visibility) on the contents window (top right corner) to turn them on or off.

To further analyse the output, the column headings in the accounts table (bottom) can be clicked to reorganise the column and view the values in increasing, decreasing, alphabetical, or reverse alphabetical order. For example, the Percentage difference column can be sorted to view the classifications that experienced the most or least change between the opening and closing years.

Land extent account results 1

Download the results by first clicking the 'Hide accounts table' button and then clicking the Download land extent accounts zip file in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Two separate shapefiles

 

  1. Open the Calculatie land extent accounts page in your browser.
  2. Ensure that the option Two separate shapefiles is selected. Two new parameters will appear.

    Land extent account user interface
  3. For the Opening year land cover shapefile, click Choose File and select the RioGrande_uso2000.zip file.
  4. Follow steps 4 to 9 from the 'One shapefile with multiple fields' tutorial above.

Results should be similar to those from the 'One shapefile with multiple fields' tutorial above.

Download the results by first clicking the 'Hide accounts table' button and then clicking the Download land extent accounts zip file in the bottom left corner of the screen.