What is the difference between land use and land cover?
Land cover is the natural landscape recorded as surface components: forest, water, wetlands, urban, etc. Land cover can be documented by analyzing spectral signatures of satellite and aerial imagery. Land use is the documentation of human uses of the landscape: residential, commercial, agricultural, etc. Land use can be inferred but not explicitly derived from satellite and aerial imagery. There is no spectral basis for land use determination in satellite imagery.
