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.

The HRL Small Landscape Features suite is primarily based on a deep learning classification of satellite image time-series from VHR_IMAGE_2021 and Sentinel-2. The VHR_IMAGE_2021 dataset, collected from ESA’s DWH, was resampled to 2m spatial resolution and converted to 8-bit COG format for bulk automated image processing.

The VHR imagery contains multispectral (RGB+NIR) products (2-4m spatial resolution) acquired between 2020 and 2022, in ETRS89-LAEA projection (EPSG:3035).

Derived from WVL, Small Woody Features layers contain information about linear and patchy woody vegetation outside forest, with the exception of artificial tree rows like orchards, tree plantation or vineyards.

To ensure connectivity between mapped linear and patchy elements, features that are outside of the geometric specification can be included in the product if they are:

• Connected to a valid (e.g., geometrically compliant) linear or patch, with no min/max criterion;

• Isolated and with an area comprised between 0.15 and 5 ha.

Quality assurance follows the ISO 9001:2015 standards for Quality Management and comprises of dedicated procedures of quality checks (QA breakpoints) during implementation of the production chain, in order to keep persistent control over the various stages of production, assure fitness-for-purpose of the end-products and that all quality requirements are fulfilled. Priority has been given to the target thematic accuracy to be achieved by each product, as well as to the issues of product consistency (spatial, thematic, temporal) and homogeneity.

Quality Assessment: The quality assessment has been performed according to INSPIRE Data Specifications. The data quality elements considered are: (i) Completeness, (ii) Logical Consistency, (iii) positional accuracy, (iv) Thematic Accuracy, (v) Temporal quality and (vi) Usability.

Accuracy assessment approach: stratified random point sampling. Interpretation of sampling points has been performed on the best available reference data. The general accuracy level of the HRL SLF products shall be in the order of 80 % or more for Overall thematic Accuracy, User’s Accuracy and Producer’s Accuracy.