In 2014, Chinese government (National Geomatics Center of China) produced two global high-resolution (30 m) full coverage land cover maps for years 2000 and 2010. This product is known as GlobeLand30 and is publicly available for download (non-commercial use only; no derivative products permited) via www.globallandcover.com. The two 30-meter resolution land cover maps show global distribution of ten major land cover classes: Water bodies, Wetland, Artificial Surfaces, Cultivated land, Permanent snow and ice, Forests, Grasslands, Shrublands, Bareland and Tundra. GlobeLand30 products are free of charge for scientific research or public welfare undertakings.
GlobeLand30 is stored according to raster data format, and there are 853 data tiles all over the world. The data products corresponding to each data tile can be downloaded in the form of ZIP files, including five parts: classification results files, coordinate information files, connection diagram of image classification files, metadata files and description files. The data size of each data tile is about 10 MB after compression.
GlobeLand30 covers the area within 80°N and 80°S, and the data tiles are organized by two methods. The data tile is implemented in the size of 5°(latitude)×6°(longitude) within 60°N and 60°S, and in the size of 5°(latitude)×12°(longitude) within 60° to 80° north and south latitude. The organization of all the data tiles is shown in Figure 1, and its vector files can be downloaded inhttp://globallandcover.com/document/globemapsheet.zip.
Can be seen here:
http://www.globallandcover.com/GLC30Download/index.aspx
soruce and links to other free land use datasets:
http://worldgrids.org/doku.php?id=wiki:land_cover_and_land_use#current_global_land_cover_maps
http://www.globallandcover.com/User/Login.aspx
Few screen shots of the data below for Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuwait cities are given below:-