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 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.

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.

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.

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. Optical VHR coverage over Europe 2021 was made available in the ESA Copernicus DWH and, together with Sentinel 2 was the main data source for the detection of small woody features identifiable within the given image resolution. The Small Woody Features Density 2021 with a 100m pixel resolution is derived from a pixel aggregation of the binary Small Woody Features 2021 (10m) status layer. 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 100-meter grid spacing (spatial resolution), distributed as a single raster file with European extent.

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. Optical VHR coverage over Europe 2021 was made available in the ESA Copernicus DWH and, together with Sentinel 2 was the main data source for the detection of small woody features identifiable within the given image resolution. The production of the HRL Small Woody 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 pan-European Very High Resolution (VHR) Image Mosaic 2021 is a seamless mosaic of the VHR 2021 dataset. The input data consists of a mix of Pleiades, SuperView, Worldview, Kompsat-3, Kompsat-4, Geoeye, SPOT, Deimos-2, Vision-1 and TripleSat images. To enhance the appearance of the input imagery, a histogram stretch was applied, cutting off the lowest and highest 0.1 percent of the histogram values and stretching the remaining values to fit the 16-bit pixel depth. For each input image, only selected areas were used to create the mosaic, and the rest was masked out to exclude areas with clouds and their shadows. Color balance was achieved using a second-order method, which modifies all input pixels toward a set of multiple points derived from a two-dimensional polynomial parabolic surface, ensuring a seamless mosaic. For several water bodies, especially large lakes, the final result exhibited a patchy surface pattern due to presence of sun glint on the satellite images. A post-processing methodology was implemented to recalculate the digital values to produce a seamless appearance surface of some of these major lakes: Vänern and Vättern (Sweden), Oulu (Finland), Peipus (Estonia), Geneva (Switzerland/France), Constance (Switzerland/Germany/Austria), Garda and Bolsena (Italy), Skadar (Montenegro/Albania), Prespa (North Macedonia/Albania/Greece), Beysehir, Iznik and Van (Turkey). The applied methodology consisted of creating individual mosaics with the images comprising only the mentioned lakes (a mosaic per lake), calculating Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for shoreline extraction, and color balancing each mosaic individually with all land surfaces masked out, using only pixels belonging to the water category. This approach allowed smoothing the patchy surfaces of the above-mentioned lakes considering statistics solely from the water pixels, ensuring a more uniform appearance. To enhance the visualization of the entire dataset at larger scales (greater than 1:500.000), the mosaic displays pan-European overviews generated from the pan-European Very High Resolution 2018 Image Mosaic. The updated VHR 2021 version is visualized only at scales below 1:500.000. 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. It 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, the VHR Image Mosaic 2021 is only available as a web map service (WMS), and not for data download.

Urban Atlas Land Cover/Land Use Change 2018-2021 provides reliable, inter-comparable, high-resolution land use and land cover change data for 764 Functional Urban Areas (FUA) with more than 50,000 inhabitants for the 2021 reference year in EEA38 countries (EU, EFTA, Western Balkans countries, as well as Türkiye) and the United Kingdom.

The European Urban Atlas provides reliable, inter-comparable, high-resolution land use and land cover data for 785 Functional Urban Area (FUA) for the 2012 reference year in EEA38 countries (EU, EFTA and Western Balkan countries as well as Türkiye) and United Kingdom. The spatial data can be downloaded together with a map for each FUA covered and a report with the metadata for the respective area. Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS) in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

The Copernicus Fractional Snow Cover (FSC) product is generated in near real-time for the entire EEA38 and the United Kingdom, based on optical satellite data from the Sentinel-2 constellation. The product provides the fraction of the surface covered by snow at the top of canopy (FSC-TOC) and on ground (FSC-OG) per pixel as a percentage (0% – 100%) with a spatial resolution of 20 m x 20 m. FSC is one of the products of the pan-European High-Resolution Snow & Ice service (HR-S&I), which are provided at high spatial resolution (20 m x 20 m and 60 m x 60 m), from the Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 constellations data from September 1, 2016 onwards. The FSC product is distributed in raster files covering an area of 110 km by 110 km with a pixel size of 20 m by 20 m in UTM/WGS84 projection, which corresponds to the Sentinel-2 input L1C product tile. Each product is composed of seven separate files corresponding to the different layers of the product, and another metadata file.