455be6a0-d6cf-42c3-a28f-e024abc8227f European Environment Agency Kongens Nytorv 6 Copenhagen K 1050 Denmark sdi@eea.europa.eu pointOfContact 2025-10-09T10:47:43.284941Z ISO 19115/19139 1.0 EPSG:3035 Pan-European Very High Resolution Image Mosaic 2018 - True Colour (2 m), Oct. 2021 2021-10-07T00:00:00 creation 2021-10-07T00:00:00 publication 01.00 copernicus_r_3035_2_m_vhrim-tc-2018_i_2017-2019_v01_r00 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. European Commission https://commission.europa.eu owner Copernicus Land Monitoring Service copernicus@eea.europa.eu https://land.copernicus.eu custodian European Environment Agency Kongens Nytorv 6 Copenhagen K 1050 Denmark sdi@eea.europa.eu http://www.eea.europa.eu publisher Copernicus Land Monitoring Service helpdesk copernicus@eea.europa.eu https://land.copernicus.eu/en/contact-service-helpdesk pointOfContact https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/public/catalogue-graphic-overview/455be6a0-d6cf-42c3-a28f-e024abc8227f.png Orthoimagery GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 2008-06-01 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.httpinspireeceuropaeutheme-theme general environmental policy mosaic raster satellite image GEMET 2021-11-30 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.gemet United Kingdom EEA38 (from 2020) Continents, countries, sea regions of the world. 2015-07-17T12:00:00 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.external.place.regions European Spatial scope 2019-05-22 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.httpinspireeceuropaeumetadatacodelistSpatialScope-SpatialScope As needed Temporal resolution 2024-03-13 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.local.temporal.temporal-update Land use EEA topics 2020-09-24 publication geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.eea-topics no limitations to public access 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. grid 2 environment imageryBaseMapsEarthCover -11.50 43.20 35.30 81.40 2017-05-01 2019-09-30 GeoTIFF https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/services/GioLand/VHR_2018_WM/ImageServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS OGC:WMS WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link Download (requires authentication) https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/GioLand/VHR_2018_WM/ImageServer ESRI:REST Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services 2010-12-08 publication See the referenced specification 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.