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.

Polygon class codes:

11: Very High Sealing Degree

12: High Sealing Degree

21: Woody - needle leaved trees

21: Pure needle leaved

22: Dominantly needle leaved

31: Pure broadleaved deciduous

32: Pure broadleaved evergreen

33: Dominantly broad leaved

40: Shrubland

51: Permanent herbaceous without trees

52: Permanent herbaceous with few trees

53: Permanent herbaceous with many trees

60: Periodically herbaceous

70: Lichens and mosses

81: Partly vegetated land - Low vegetation cover

82: Partly vegetated land - Intermediate vegetation cover

90: Non-vegetated land

100: Water

110: Snow and ice

CLCplus Backbone vector 2018 is a land cover map that contains vector polygon geometries (minimum mapping unit: 0.5. ha; minimum mapping width: 20 m) and is based on image segmentation techniques of Sentinel satellite time series (Softbone) and a combination of existing reference datasets for geometries containing transportation and hydrological networks (Hardbone). Each polygon represents aggregated landscape objects and contains their dominant land cover among the 18 basic land cover classes. In addition, polygons are enriched with land cover fractions from the CLCplus Backbone raster as well as aggregated attributes based on other CLMS and Copernicus products (e.g. topography).

Input data:

1) Softbone: landscape objects obtained from image segmentation techniques of Sentinel-2 L2A data acquired from 2018-04-01 to 2018-10-31.

2) Hardbone: persistent linear landscape objects such as transportation network (i.e. roads, railways) and hydrological waterways (i.e. rivers, lakes, canals) from several external sources (e.g. Open Street Map, CLMS EU-Hydro river and canal network, Water Information System for Europe (WISE) surface waterbody lines, national/regional road and hydrology data).

Processing and Attributes:

1) Landscape objects are generated by combining two levels of objects - level 1 and level 2 objects - so called “Hardbone” and “Softbone”, respectively. Hardbone represents a geometric skeleton of persistent linear landscape objects such as transportation network (i.e. roads, railways) and hydrological waterways (i.e. rivers, lakes, canals), which comprises of various line vector data. Softbone further delineates landscape objects in a controlled automatic manner based on the image segmentation technique, which generates landscape object polygons by their spectral response and variation throughout a year within the frame of Hardbone.

2) Each polygon is assigned with its dominant land cover class (based on majority rule) and the areal fractions (in percent of the total area of the respective polygon) of the three most abundant underlying CLCplus Backbone raster 2018 classes. In addition, CLCplus Backbone vector 2018 is enriched with 58 attributes derived from other CLMS and Copernicus products: CLMS Urban Atlas, CLMS Riparian Zones, CLMS Coastal Zones, CLMS Tree Cover Density, CLMS Imperviousness Density, CLMS Water and Wetness, CLMS High-Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity (HR-VPP), CEMS European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) and Copernicus DEM 10m.

Postprocessing:

Steps applied comprise 1) smoothing of Softbone geometries, 2) reintroduction of Hardbone lines, 3) snapping vertices, 4) cleaning the remaining MMU errors and topological consistency (gaps and overlaps).

Changes to previous release:

Not available

You can read more about the product here: https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/clc-backbone