Using semantics to clarify the conceptual confusion betweenland coverandland use: the example of ‘forest’

This article is concerned with data and classifications that confuse the concepts of land cover and use. This conceptual confusion is problematic for data integration and has resulted in calls the separation of land use and land cover from the global land monitoring community (GLP 2005). Text mining is used to unravel the different concepts embedded in land cover and land semantics and applied to legal definitions of forest cover and use. Whilst the results show the biological dimension to land cover descriptions and the socioeconomic character of land , they reveal the deep degree of semantic confusion embedded in land cover and land use . The implications for this lack of internal semantic accuracy and consistency in land inventories are discussed and the case made for separating the concepts of land cover land use.