Discover Land

 

The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) provides geospatial information on land cover and its changes, land use, vegetation state, water cycle and Earth's surface energy variables to a broad range of users in Europe and across the World in the field of environmental terrestrial applications.

It supports applications in a variety of domains such as spatial and urban planning, forest management, water management, agriculture and food security, nature conservation and restoration, rural development, ecosystem accounting and mitigation/adaptation to climate change.

CLMS is jointly implemented by the European Environment Agency and the European Commission DG Joint Research Centre (JRC) and has been operational since 2012.

CLMS consists of five main components:

The systematic monitoring of biophysical parameters produces mainly a series of qualified bio-geophysical products on the status and evolution of the land surface. This is produced at a global scale every ten days with a mid spatial resolution and is complemented by a long term time series. The products are used to monitor vegetation, crops, water cycle, energy budget and terrestrial cryosphere variables.

Land cover and land use mapping produces land cover classifications at various level of detail, both within a pan-European and global context. At the pan-European level, these are complemented by detailed layers on land cover characteristics, such as imperviousness, forests, grassland, water and wetness and small woody features. At global level, the land cover mapping follows the FAO's modular-hierarchical Land Cover Classification System.

Thematic hot-spot mapping aims to provide tailored and more detailed information on specific areas of interest, known as hot-spots. Hotspots in the context of CLMS are prone to specific environmental challenges.

Imagery and reference data provide satellite image mosaic in high and very high resolutions and reference datasets. This includes, on the one hand, satellite image mosaic from contributing missions covering the territory of Europe as well as Sentinel-2 image mosaic production at global level. On the other hand, it consists of reference datasets providing homogeneous pan-European coverage of some key geospatial themes, such as hydrography and elevation.

Ground motion. In addition to the above-mentioned components, a new European Ground Motion activity has been launched. The activity measures ground displacements, including landslides and subsidence, as well as deformation of infrastructure.

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In December 2014, the European Commission signed a Delegation Agreement with the European Environment Agency for the implementation of the Pan-European and Local component. The Technical Annex of this agreement is available in the Document Repository (under Technical documents) on this website. The service became operational in 2012.