• Arctic SDI catalogue
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Pan-European Very High Resolution Image Mosaic 2018 - True Colour (2 m), Oct. 2021

The pan-European Very High Resolution (VHR) Image Mosaic 2018 is a seamless mosaic of the VHR 2018 dataset, based on watershed segmentation of image overlaps.

The input data consists of a mix of Pleiades, SPOT, DOVE, Kompsat-4, Deimos-2, SuperView, and TripleSat images. The input imagery has been colour balanced against the Sentinel-2 based HR mosaic from 2018. Colour balancing is done through iterative histogram matching, where the first iteration is used to identify clouds and snow, and the second iteration re-balances, with the bright objects masked out. Cloud cover has been minimized through an innovative approach to cloud masking, which relies on automatically identifying and de-prioritizing overly bright areas in the resulting mosaic. Some clouds and snow remain, as all pixels have to have a value, meaning that if no cloud or snow free images were available for a given area, the bright pixels will remain.

The mosaic primarily is used as input data in the production of various Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) datasets and services, such as land cover maps and high resolution layers on land cover characteristic and can be also useful for CLMS users for visualizations and classifications on land.

The input imagery for the creation of the mosaic is provided by ESA. Due to license restrictions, VHR Image Mosaic 2018 is only available as a web service (WMS), and not for data download.

Simple

Date ( Creation )
2021-10-07T00:00:00
Date ( Publication )
2021-10-07T00:00:00
Edition
01.00
Identifier
copernicus_r_3035_2_m_vhrim-tc-2018_i_2017-2019_v01_r00
Owner
  European Commission
https://commission.europa.eu
Custodian
  Copernicus Land Monitoring Service
https://land.copernicus.eu
Publisher
  European Environment Agency
Kongens Nytorv 6 , Copenhagen , K , 1050 , Denmark
http://www.eea.europa.eu
Point of contact
  Copernicus Land Monitoring Service helpdesk
https://land.copernicus.eu/en/contact-service-helpdesk
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ( Theme )
  • Orthoimagery
Keywords
Keywords
GEMET ( Theme )
  • general
  • environmental policy
  • mosaic
  • raster
  • satellite image
Continents, countries, sea regions of the world. ( Place )
  • United Kingdom
  • EEA38 (from 2020)
Spatial scope ( Theme )
  • European
Temporal resolution ( Temporal )
  • As needed
EEA topics ( Theme )
  • Land use
Access constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
no limitations to public access
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

The Copernicus component is governed by Regulation (EU) No 2021/696 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing the Union Space Programme and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme and repealing Regulations (EU) No 912/2010, (EU) No 1285/2013 and (EU) No 377/2014 and Decision No 541/2014/EU. Within the Copernicus component, a portfolio of land monitoring activities has been delegated by the European Union to the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the DG Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

The Copernicus land monitoring products and services are made available on a principle of full, open and free access, as established by the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1159/2013 of 12 July 2013.

Free, full and open access to the products and services of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service is made on the conditions that:

1. When distributing or communicating Copernicus Land Monitoring Service products and services (data, software scripts, web services, user and methodological documentation and similar) to the public, users shall inform the public of the source of these products and services.

2. Where the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service products and services have been adapted or modified by the user, the user shall clearly state this.

3. Users shall make sure not to convey the impression to the public that the user's activities are officially endorsed by the European Union.

Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Distance
2  m
Metadata language
en
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Imagery base maps earth cover
N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Begin date
2017-05-01
End date
2019-09-30
Unique resource identifier
EPSG:3035
Distribution format
  • GeoTIFF ( )

OnLine resource
https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/services/GioLand/VHR_2018_WM/ImageServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS ( OGC:WMS )
Protocol
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
Name
Download (requires authentication)
Function
Download
OnLine resource
https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/GioLand/VHR_2018_WM/ImageServer ( ESRI:REST )

OnLine resource

No information provided.
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Domain consistency

Conformance result

Date ( Publication )
2010-12-08
Explanation
See the referenced specification
Statement

The input data consists of a mix of Pleiades, SPOT, DOVE, Kompsat-4, Deimos-2, SuperView, and TripleSat images.

The processing steps were as follows:

1. Resampling of all data to common resolution (2m)

2. Pre-normalization of DOVE frames

3. Merging of tiled datasets, such as DOVE frames and large SPOT images.

4. Iterative colour balancing against the Sentinel-2 HR ARD mosaic, supported by water, snow, and cloud masking.

5. Watershed segmentation on the morphological gradient to create seamlines.

6. Cropping against seamlines and cloud-optimization for easy presentation.

The list of steps outline above was implemented in custom Python code.

File identifier
455be6a0-d6cf-42c3-a28f-e024abc8227f XML
Metadata language
en
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Date stamp
2025-10-09T10:47:43.284941Z
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115/19139
Metadata standard version
1.0
Point of contact
  European Environment Agency
Kongens Nytorv 6 , Copenhagen , K , 1050 , Denmark
 
 

Overviews

overview

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Keywords

EEA topics
Land use
GEMET
environmental policy general mosaic raster satellite image
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
Orthoimagery
Spatial scope
European

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Associated resources

Not available


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