Received: 04 Apr 2022 – Discussion started: 15 Jun 2022
Abstract. In the European Union, a tri-annual surveyed sample collects land cover and land use information under the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey since 2006. A total of 1,351,293 observations at 651,780 unique locations for 106 variables along with 5.4 million landscape and point photos were collected during five LUCAS surveys. In addition to these photos, a set of previously unpublished LUCAS Cover photos were also taken, i.e. following the protocol, a close-up view of the tree, crop, and plant species. These photos contain more details so that tree, crop, and plant species should be identifiable. Between 2006 and 2018, 875,661 LUCAS Cover photos that show the relevant land cover in its entirety were collected. Due to surveyor differences, the images sometimes display elements that require a two-stage deep learning anonymisation process, after which 346 photos were removed before publication. This paper summarizes the collection of LUCAS Cover photos, the filtering for mandatory privacy issues, and provides links to download the data along with the photo metadata, and cross-links to the corresponding LUCAS harmonised survey data. Moreover, after presenting the final public and open dataset consisting in 874,646 photos, potential applications relying on recent advances in geo-spatial analysis and statistical learning such as large scale biodiversity monitoring are discussed.
This paper presents an interesting dataset of geo located photos of land Cover in the EU that was unpublished until now. This dataset is complementary to an existing database of photos from the LUCAS survey. This new dataset (are related paper) is worth to be published.
The abstract and the description of the differences between the photos from the already published dataset and the photos from this new dataset can be improved (see next section)
Technical corrections
The abstract would need to be improved. In particular the abstract cannot be easily understood without reading the manuscript itself. E.g.
The First sentence in abstract seem to lack a word. Suggestion to add ‘exercise’ as follows: “In the European Union, a tri-annual surveyed sample exercise collects land cover ..”
The difference between “landscape and point photos” is not obvious (i.e. one has to read the manuscript to get the information)
Difference between “landscape and point photos” and “LUCAS Cover photos” is not obvious from the abstract alone.
“LUCAS Cover photos that show the relevant land cover in its entirety” What does it mean? What is the difference or specificity compared to the landscape photos?
“Due to surveyor differences, the images sometimes display elements that require a two-stage deep learning anonymisation process”. The rationale of the ‘surveyor differences’ is not obvious to understand the need of a ‘ anonymization process’
From section 3 and figure 2 the Difference between landscape photos and “LUCAS Cover photos is quite clear. But the difference between landscape and point photos is still not evident.
Between 2006 and 2018, 875,661 LUCAS Cover (i.e. close-up) photos were taken over a systematic sampling over the European Union. This geo-located photo dataset has been curated and is being made available along with the surveyed label data including land cover and plant species.
Between 2006 and 2018, 875,661 LUCAS Cover (i.e. close-up) photos were taken over a systematic...
