This metadata refer to the 'Corine Land Cover plus Backbone' (CLCplus Backbone) which is a spatially detailed, large scale, Earth Observation-based land cover inventory. The CLCplus Backbone Raster Product is a 10m pixel-based land cover map based on Sentinel satellite time series from July 2017 to June 2019. For each pixel it shows the dominant land cover among the 11 basic land cover classes. The product has a three years update cycle and is available for the 2018 reference year.

This metadata refers to the Corine Land Cover plus Backbone (CLCplus Backbone), a spatially detailed, large-scale, Earth Observation-based land cover inventory which is produced by the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS). The CLCplus Backbone is a high-resolution raster land cover map based on Sentinel-2 satellite time series. Each 10m-pixel contains the dominant land cover among the 11 basic land cover classes. See pixel class codes in the 'Additional Information' section below. The product is available from the 2018 reference year, with a first update produced for the 2021 reference year and moved to an update cycle of 2 years from 2021 onwards.

This metadata refers to the 'Corine Land Cover Plus Backbone' (CLCplus Backbone), a spatially detailed, large-scale, Earth Observation-based land cover inventory which is produced by the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS). The CLCplus Backbone vector 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 Sentinel satellite time series and a combination of existing reference datasets for geometries containing transportation and hydrological networks. Each polygon represents aggregated landscape objects and contains their dominant land cover among the 18 basic land cover classes. See polygon class codes in the additional information section. 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). CLCplus Backbone vector is an independent product and its thematic and geometric contents differ from CLCplus Backbone raster and Corine Land Cover. The CLCplus Backbone vector is available for the 2018 reference year.

The Copernicus High Resolution Forest Layer Tree Cover Change Mask (TCCM) 2015-2018 raster product provides information on the change between the reference years 2015 and 2018 and consists of 4 thematic classes (unchanged areas with no tree cover / new tree cover / loss of tree cover / unchanged areas with tree cover) at 20m spatial resolution and covers EEA38 area and the United Kingdom. The production of the High Resolution Forest layers was coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme. The High Resolution Forest product consists of three types of (status) products and additional change products. The status products are available for the 2012, 2015 and 2018 reference years: 1. Tree cover density providing level of tree cover density in a range from 0-100%; 2. Dominant leaf type providing information on the dominant leaf type: broadleaved or coniferous; 3. A Forest type product. The forest type product allows to get as close as possible to the FAO forest definition. In its original (20m) resolution it consists of two products: 1) a dominant leaf type product that has a MMU of 0.5 ha, as well as a 10% tree cover density threshold applied, and 2) a support layer that maps, based on the dominant leaf type product, trees under agricultural use and in urban context (derived from CLC and high resolution imperviousness 2009 data). For the final 100m product trees under agricultural use and urban context from the support layer are removed.

The Copernicus High Resolution Forest Layer Tree Cover Change Mask (TCCM) 2012-2015 raster product provides information on the change between the reference years 2012 and 2015 and consists of 4 thematic classes (unchanged areas with no tree cover / new tree cover / loss of tree cover / unchanged areas with tree cover) at 20m spatial resolution and covers EEA38 area and the United Kingdom. The production of the High Resolution Forest layers was coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme. The High Resolution Forest product consists of three types of (status) products and additional change products. The status products are available for the 2012, 2015 and 2018 reference years: 1. Tree cover density providing level of tree cover density in a range from 0-100%; 2. Dominant leaf type providing information on the dominant leaf type: broadleaved or coniferous; 3. A Forest type product. The forest type product allows to get as close as possible to the FAO forest definition. In its original (20m) resolution it consists of two products: 1) a dominant leaf type product that has a MMU of 0.5 ha, as well as a 10% tree cover density threshold applied, and 2) a support layer that maps, based on the dominant leaf type product, trees under agricultural use and in urban context (derived from CLC and high resolution imperviousness 2009 data). For the final 100m product trees under agricultural use and urban context from the support layer are removed.

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.

The Coastal Zones LC/LU Change (CZC) 2012-2018 is providing the Land Cover / Land Use (LC/ LU) change for areas along the coastline of the EEA38 countries and the United Kingdom, between the reference years 2012 and 2018. The Coastal Zones product monitors landscape dynamics in European coastal territory to an inland depth of 10 km with a total area of approximately 730,000 km², with all the relevant areas (estuaries, coastal lowlands, nature reserves). The production of the coastal zone layers was coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, as part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) Local Component. The Coastal Zones Change product covers a buffer zone of coastline derived from EU-Hydro v1.1. The Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) Change layer is extracted from Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite data and other available data. The reference years for the change are 2012 and 2018. The class definitions follow the pre-defined nomenclature on the basis of Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) typology of ecosystems (Level 1 to Level 4) and CORINE Land Cover adapted to the specific characteristics of coastal zones. The classification provides 71 distinct thematic classes with a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 0.5 ha and a Minimum Mapping Width (MMW) of 10 m. The status product is available for the 2012 and 2018 reference years. This CZC dataset is distributed in vector format, in a single OGC GeoPackage file covering the area of interest.

The Woody Vegetation Layer is a new product that aims at providing information about presence or absence of woody vegetation of any type across Europe without any differentiation of height, size or nature and without masking forested areas. It includes isolated trees or permanent crops such as orchards. This helps users understand the distribution of these features across different regions and provide an “all tree layer” that users can use to derive their own application. The production of the HRL Small Landscape Features is coordinated by EEA in the frame of Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme. The product is a raster dataset with 5-meter grid spacing (spatial resolution), distributed as 100 x 100 km tiles that are fully conformant with the EEA reference grid.

The European Ground Motion Service (EGMS) is a component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. EGMS provides consistent, regular, standardised, harmonised and reliable information regarding natural and anthropogenic ground motion phenomena over the Copernicus Participating States and across national borders, with millimetre accuracy. This layer is produced based on GNSS data from various sources, with the EUREF Densification network as the main entry point. After filtering and quality control, a total of 3770 stations are used to generate the GNSS model which contains average velocities in east, north and up directions displayed on a 50-km grid. The grid dimension is determined by the average distance between well-maintained GNSS stations over continental Europe. The GNSS model is distributed to users in a single comma-separated values file. Each cell of the model is associated to a value of vertical and horizontal velocity. The product covers the Copernicus Participating States (except for DROMs) and United Kingdom.

Small Woody Features are important vectors of biodiversity and provide information on fragmentation of habitats with a direct potential for restoration while also providing a link to hazard protection and green infrastructure, amongst others. VHR_IMAGE_2021 made available in the ESA Copernicus DWH was the main data source for the detection of small woody features identifiable within the given image resolution. The Small Woody Features layer contains woody linear and patchy elements but will not be further differentiated into trees, hedges, bushes and scrub. The spatial pattern shall be limited to linear structures and isolated patches on the basis of geometric characteristics. This product is a vector dataset distributed as OGC GeoPackage files, compliant with the EEA reference grid (100km x 100km).