Land Use Data

Africover is a land use data for several countries in East Africa. Click "Web Maps" in the left column to see what kind of data is available for each country.

Global Land Cover 2000 provides land use data for all over the world, produced from daily satellite images from November 1, 1999 to December 31, 2000. It's not clear if the data is available in the ArcGIS shape file.

Global Land Cover Characteristics (GLCC) database

• See Hansen et al. (2000) and Loveland et al. (2000)

MODIS Land Cover database

• Downloadable for free of charge here
• 5'x5' resolution, annually 2001-2012
• Forests, shrublands, savannas, grasslands, wetlands, croplands, urban areas, etc.
• see Friedl et al. (2002)

The USGS Land Cover Institute (LCI) also distributes land cover data, whose relation to those listed above is yet to be investigated myself.