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Table 1 Characteristics of the greenspace data sources

From: Comparing different data sources by examining the associations between surrounding greenspace and children's weight status

 

NDVI*

OSM*

UA*

Type of measurements

Biophysical variables in vegetation

Data of categorical land uses

Data of categorical land uses

Type of data

Primary data

Primary data

Secondary data

Key characteristics

Using Landsat image to calculate the visible and near-infrared light reflected by vegetation. The result refers to the NDVI

A project which allows the community of Internet users to continuously update open and publicly available resources

Land cover data based on satellite imagery

Data availability

Worldwide provided

Worldwide provided, although with different degrees of accuracy

Data available for major urban cities in the European area

Time scale

Depends on the Landsat satellites

Continuously update

Data prepared periodically, currently from 2006, 2012 and 2018

Responsible agency

Landsat images available from the United States Geological Survey (USGS)

Database maintained by the OpenStreetMap Foundation

Project coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA)

Greenspace categories identified

Greenspace were identified

with the use of supervised

classification based on the

representative samples for the

different green space types in the

digital image

– Allotments

– Cemetery

– Farmland/

farmyard

– Forest/wood

– Garden

– Grassland

– Greenfield

– Greenhouse

horticulture

– Meadow

– Nature reserve

– Orchard

– Park

– Plant nursery

– Scrub

– Trees

– Village green

– Wetland

– Green urban areas

(Code 14,100)

– Arable land (annual crops) (Code 21,000)

– Permanent crops (Code 22,000)

– Pastures (Code 23,000)

-Complex and mixed cultivation (Code 24,000)

– Forests (Code 30,000)

– Herbaceous vegetation associations (Code 32,000)

– Wetland (Code 40,000)

  1. *NDVI: Measurement of calculating the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) by analysising Landsat satellite images; OSM: the OpenStreetMap dataset; UA: the European Urban Atlas dataset