Accuracy of CORINE land cover classification in Northern Finland

The new CORINE 2000 land cover classification of Finland is based on automated interpretation of Landsat images and data integration with existing digital map data. Landsat images are used in estimation of continuous variables describing vegetation type and coverage, as well as updating existing map data. The estimation errors of land cover variables are reasonably small in Northern Finland. The estimation results are most accurate for polygons with size of 10-100 ha. The interpretation of whole mosaic composed of 9 images is feasible. Usually, the bias of estimates were smaller for whole mosaic and RMSE and correlation little better for individual images and submosaics