The impact of landscape characteristics on the performance of upscaled maps.

Upscaled maps, as necessary data sources, have drawn much attention to fill data gaps or match the spatial resolution of pre-existing projects. Nevertheless, it remains a challenging task to quantitatively assess the impact of landscape characteristics on the upscaled maps. To simplify the investigation, three characteristics: fragmentation, number of classes and major class impact factor (MCIF), were selected. We utilized SIMMAP to produce categorical maps for generating base maps with different landscape characteristics. The Majority Rule Based algorithm was then used to produce upscaled maps at 11 different spatial resolutions. The findings indicate that the combined effect of landscape patterns greatly impacts upscaling accuracy. This important result should be carefully considered when developing the next generation of upscaling techniques. Overall, extending our understanding of the impacts of landscape characteristics is a critical step forward improving upscaling accuracy and therefore, our use of these maps