MapBiomas is a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), universities, research institutions, and technology startups that produce and promote the use of qualified information to manage land use and land cover in South America and other tropical and subtropical regions.

As a network, we are committed to generating data, methods, tools, and information to qualify understanding, analysis, and decision-making regarding the conservation and sustainable management of continental natural resources.

Chile has been a member of the MapBiomas Network since 2021, contributing to the mapping of the territory. In 2024, it published its first collection of the MapBiomas Land Cover and Land Use Initiative (2000-2022), covering the entire Chilean territory.

The network comprises experts in Chilean biodiversity and landscapes, remote sensing, geographic information systems, and programming who work collaboratively to generate and share, publicly and free of charge, accurate and up-to-date information on the transformation of Chile's territory."

MapBiomas Chile involves researchers and specialists from the University of Chile (UChile), University of Concepción (UdeC), University of La Frontera (UFRO), and University of Magallanes (UMAG), who are coordinated by WWF Chile. All work is carried out using cloud computing through the Google Earth Engine platform.

The land cover and land use maps and Landsat mosaics can be downloaded from the platform via the following link: LINK

Don't forget to download the legend codes at: LINK

In Google Earth Engine, it is possible to access all the data. Landsat mosaics are found in the ID: "" Land cover and land use maps in the ID: "".

Each layer represents a year of the time series. For Collection 1.0, layer 0 = 2000 and layer 22 = 2022.

MapBiomas Chile maps are in raster format due to their extensive spatial and temporal coverage, resulting in large volumes of data. As the spatial data are continuous and extensive, the raster format allows for efficient storage and analysis compared to the Shapefile format.

Can I download the data in Shapefile format? The data is not available in this format. The recommended solution, if you want to work with vectors, is to download the data, perform territorial or spatial clipping of your interest, and then vectorize using your favorite GIS software.

Yes, MapBiomas Chile data are public and free for non-commercial use or for public interest purposes.

Yes, MapBiomas Chile collections are available as layers (assets) on the Google Earth Engine platform and can be accessed, processed, and analyzed directly on the platform without the need to download the data. To obtain the IDs of MapBiomas Chile collections in Google Earth Engine, go to FAQ n° 4, or access the following address:  LINK

To access, you need to have a registered account on Google Earth Engine (GEE). This can be done through the following link: https://earthengine.google.com

Upon accessing the GEE Code Editor (https://code.earthengine.google.com), you can initiate scripts to view and process data. At the link, you will find examples of scripts to access MapBiomas Chile data on Google Earth Engine. LINK

MapBiomas Chile data are public and free; you can use them simply by referring to the source in the following format: 

"MapBiomas Chile Project - Collection [version] of the Annual Series of Land Cover and Land Use Maps of Chile, consulted on [date] via the link: [LINK]”

"The MapBiomas Chile Project is a multi-institutional initiative to generate annual land cover and land use maps of the Chilean territory from automatic classification processes applied to satellite images. The complete project description is available at https://chile.mapbiomas.org/."

Example: 

MapBiomas Chile Project - Collection 1.0 of the Annual Series of Land Cover and Land Use Maps of Chile, consulted on April 3, 2024, via the link: https://chile.mapbiomas.org "The MapBiomas Chile Project is a multi-institutional initiative to generate annual land cover and land use maps of the Chilean territory from automatic classification processes applied to satellite images." The complete project description is available at https://chile.mapbiomas.org/.

The detailed description of the legend with its corresponding code (raster) is available for download at: https://chile.mapbiomas.org/codigos-de-la-leyenda/

Yes, land cover and land use statistics, as well as transition matrices for the entire country or specific territorial subsets, are available for download at: Statistics.

MapBiomas uses for its satellite images the standard representation of Google Earth Engine (Latitude/Longitude and datum WGS84). Therefore, the size of each pixel varies depending on its latitude. Landsat pixels have an approximate spatial resolution of 30 meters, which translates to an area of 900 square meters per pixel. However, it is not recommended to calculate the area simply by multiplying the number of pixels by 900 square meters. This generates inaccuracies in the results.

To improve accuracy in area calculation, MapBiomas uses the ee.Image.pixelArea() function of Google Earth Engine, which generates an image where the value of each pixel represents its area in square meters, taking into account the projection and spatial resolution of the original image.

You can access the description of all reference maps used by MapBiomas Chile at: LINK