Land Cover and Change Map Accuracy Assessment and Area Estimation Good Practices Protocol

The main purpose of these community good practice guidelines is to encourage correct implementation of land cover map accuracy assessment and area estimation methods by map producers and to enable map users to correctly interpret the provided map accuracy information. To do so, we provide an overview of key principles of accuracy assessment (section 2.2), recommend specific methods for various components of accuracy assessment published in high quality peer-reviewed studies, and point to potential misapplications of the presented methods that should be avoided.