MAPPING LAND COVER OF EUROPE FOR 2006 UNDER GMES

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1 Proceedings of the 2 nd Workshop of the EARSeL SIG on Land Use and Land Cover MAPPING LAND COVER OF EUROPE FOR 2006 UNDER GMES Chris Steenmans 1 and George Büttner 2 1. European Environment Agency, Kongens Nytorv 6, DK-1050 Copenhagen K, Denmark; tel: , fax: ; Chris.Steenmans@eea.europa.eu 2. Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FÖMI) (partner in the European Topic Centre Terrestrial Environment consortium); H-1149 Budapest, Bosnyák tér 5. Hungary; tel: , fax: , Buttner.Gyorgy@fomi.hu ABSTRACT Recent strategic discussions amongst EEA member countries, European Parliament and the main EU institutions responsible for environmental policy, reporting and assessment have underlined an increasing need for factual and quantitative information on the state of the environment to be based on timely, quality assured data, in particular in land cover and land use related issues. Based on these requirements for , EEA put forward a proposal to collaborate together with the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) on the implementation of a fast track service on land monitoring. The GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) fast track service on land monitoring combines a standard CORINE Land Cover (CLC) update with the production of additional more detailed data for forests and soil sealing at European level based on high resolution multispectral imagery and lower resolution multitemporal data. The service will deliver the following products during : Ortho-rectified satellite images and mosaics for the reference year 2006 (+/- 1 year), referred to as IMAGE2006; CORINE land cover changes ; CORINE land cover 2006 (CLC2006) High resolution forest layer 2006 High resolution soil sealing layer 2006 Geographic coverage is EU25 and neighbouring 13 countries, altogether 5.8 Mkm 2. Results will be freely available through Internet. INTRODUCTION The European Environment Agency is committed to support the spatial data requirements of European and global development initiatives, including key thematic strategies on marine systems and soils, with particular attention to land-use changes in ecologically sensitive areas and protection of soils (i). Recent strategic discussions amongst member countries, European Parliament and the main EU institutions responsible for environmental policy, reporting and assessment (DG ENV, EEA, ESTAT and JRC) have underlined an increasing need for factual and quantitative information on the state of the environment to be based on timely, quality assured data, in particular in land cover and land use related issues. DG Environment addressed in June 2005 a request to EEA to include the following services related to land use in its multi-annual work programme until 2008: Provision of high quality and reliable land cover data, delivering more regular updates and higher resolutions for vulnerable areas; 202

2 Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn, September 2006 Integration of spatial and non-spatial data, including non-environmental data into a spatial information platform to support relevant, reliable and high quality assessments. EEA and DG Environment agreed to explore, within the frame of the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) initiative, the best approach for improved collection of relevant European land cover and land use data and information. The EEA Management Board endorsed a proposal in June 2005 to update the CORINE land cover data together with high resolution land cover data as part of the implementation of the GMES fast track service on land monitoring. DG Agriculture has expressed its interest to support a CORINE land cover update, which should be synchronised, as much as possible, with the LUCAS 2006 in-situ agrienvironmental monitoring campaign coordinated by Eurostat, to provide complementary information on land cover and land use changes between 2000 and 2006, which will be used for updating agri-environmental indicators. Based on these requirements for , in March 2006 EEA put forward a proposal to collaborate with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission (EC) on the implementation of a fast track service on land monitoring, in line with the Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament (ii). DG JRC expressed its availability to undertake together with ESA the definition and implementation of the necessary satellite data procurement and processing in view of supporting the present proposal. This action will be undertaken in the context of the development of Community satellite based core products that will serve a broad number of services to support environmental monitoring and assessment objectives. The proposal builds on the benefits of GMES by combining the planned CORINE land cover (CLC) update with the production of additional high resolution data for a selected number of land cover classes, such as those concerning built-up areas and forest. The shortcomings of a standard CLC update, which is deemed insufficient to meet the wide range of user needs, can be solved by the creation of complementary high resolution land cover data for a selected number of classes. This proposal is also fully in line with the ESA statement of work for scaling up consolidated services related to land information services in stage 2 of the Earthwatch GMES Services Element (GSE Land and GSE Forest) issued in This initiative will contribute to the development and implementation of the shared European information system, of which GMES products and services as well as INSPIRE are key structuring elements. EEA, DG ENV, JRC and Eurostat are closely collaborating on the development of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure, building further on the experience from IMAGE2000 and CLC2000 (iii). CONSOLIDATED USER REQUIREMENTS Several meetings were organised during with a broad range of stakeholders to discuss the present and future user requirements for land use and land cover change data. From a long list of requirements for land cover and land use information for the next decade, EEA proposed at the GMES Advisory Council in June 2005 that the GMES fast track land monitoring service should be a service providing on a regular basis core land cover/land use change data that can be used by a wide range of downstream services at European, national, regional and local level. The following information requirements for framing, implementing and evaluating main policy areas at European and national level will be supported by the core data of this GMES fast track land monitoring service: - Environmental thematic strategies on urban environment, soil protection and sustainable use of natural resources; 203

3 Proceedings of the 2 nd Workshop of the EARSeL SIG on Land Use and Land Cover - Reporting obligations under the Water framework directive, management of Natura2000 sites, UN ECE Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution deposition and dispersion modelling; - Reporting obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol; - Environmental impact assessment and reporting; - EU enlargement and neighbourhood policy; - Common Agricultural Policy, i.e. rural development and agri-environmental measures; - Regional policy, territorial cohesion and European spatial development perspective; - Infrastructure for spatial information in Europe INSPIRE. More specifically, GMES will contribute to the improvement of the specific EEA services related to land cover and land use change for the coming years. Specific requests for land cover and land use change data and information related to soil and agriculture, urban environment, integrated coastal zone management, biodiversity and Natura2000 related services, as can be inferred by the following list of requests: - Data and analysis regarding effect of accession in new Member States. EEA is requested to provide data and analysis regarding changes in land cover and land use, in particular in the areas of: o Sealing; o Land use change related to agriculture and Common Agricultural Policy; o Land use changes resulting from the use of Community funds. - Data and analysis to support the further development and implementation of the Natura2000 network, including coastal habitats; - Data and analysis to support the design and implementation of policy approaches and instruments for the monitoring and assessment of nature and biodiversity and the factors, pressures and responses that impact on it, in particular in relation to the achievement of the target of halting biodiversity loss within the Community by 2010; - Data and analysis in relation to High Nature Value Farmland and changes over time to assist DG Environment with policy information, particularly in its efforts to have High Nature Value Farmland areas included as a criterion for designation of Less Favoured Areas (LFAs) once the reform of LFAs begins to be discussed; - Information on the environmental impacts of sealing. EEA is requested to collect and analyse information on sealing of land, including for the 500 or so major urban agglomerations in Europe. This must build on information derived from CORINE land cover if possible on a higher frequency and with local higher resolution, and address in particular the effects on: o Soil functions; o Water courses, including runoff; o Biodiversity, including fragmentation and other effects on habitats; o Temperature increase in sealed areas; o Landscapes, in particular with a view of sealed green-field sites. The following boundary conditions were discussed at the GMES Land Monitoring workshop organised by DG ENTR in October 2005 and are recommended for the implementation of the GMES fast track service on land monitoring: - The service should cover all EU member states and neighbouring countries providing a snapshot of a specific year for which the majority of the satellite data should be acquired; - Continuity of CORINE land cover dataflow should be guaranteed; - Core land cover data should be available preferably within 1.5 year after the satellite data acquisition in order to ensure timely information; - Updates with a continental coverage should be envisaged at least every 5 years; some environmental or other sensitive areas i.e. urban areas, mining sites, protected 204

4 Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn, September 2006 areas, coastal zones or other regions with high rate of land use and land cover changes, might require more frequent updates; - Coordination of European with national, regional, local monitoring activities should be fostered, in line with the principle of subsidiarity. - The GMES service should build on existing land cover and land use experience and monitoring activities. Compatibility should be envisaged with CORINE Land Cover (iv) (for continental monitoring), Moland (for urban monitoring) as well as the FAO land cover classification system (v) (for global monitoring); - Co-ownership of the products should be guaranteed by all actors involved in the service implementation; - Open access and free dissemination data policy as applied for IMAGE2000 and CLC2000 based services should be maintained. SERVICE AND PRODUCT DEFINITION For the implementation of the GMES fast track service on land monitoring , the CLC update will be combined with the production of new high resolution land cover to provide a first set of cost-effective operational services on core land cover and land use data at European level, including the provision of high quality ortho-rectified multi-temporal data. The service will deliver the following products: 1. Ortho-rectified satellite images for the reference year 2006 (+/- 1 year); 2. European mosaic based on ortho-rectified satellite imagery (referred to as IMAGE2006); 3. CORINE land cover changes ; 4. CORINE land cover 2006 (referred to as CLC2006); 5. High resolution built-up areas and degree of soil sealing 2006; 6. High resolution forest layer This initiative will prepare the path for a first operational GMES land monitoring service from 2008 onwards, namely the regular provision of freely accessible European wide coherent core land cover data which can be used further downstream for commercial and noncommercial applications at local, national and international level. GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE The GMES fast track service on land monitoring will cover the EU25 and neighbouring countries meaning, all EEA Member countries (namely: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom) as well as the western Balkan countries (namely Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro) who are participating in the regular CORINE land cover dataflow. IMPLEMENTATION STEPS To implement this GMES fast track service on land monitoring, the following work packages are defined: WP1 Satellite data procurement and processing (IMAGE2006) WP 1.1 Satellite data acquisition WP 1.2 Ortho-correction WP 1.3 Satellite image mosaic WP2 In-situ and ancillary data collection 205

5 Proceedings of the 2 nd Workshop of the EARSeL SIG on Land Use and Land Cover WP3 CORINE land cover mapping (CLC2006) WP 3.1 CORINE land cover change mapping WP 3.2 CORINE land cover mapping 2006 WP4 High resolution land cover mapping WP 4.1 Built-up areas and degree of soil sealing 2006 WP 4.2 Forest layer 2006 WP5 Quality control and validation WP6 Data dissemination WP7 Project management ORGANISATION OF WORK EEA will take the overall technical lead for implementation. Depending on the applied funding mechanisms, the administrative management of the different work packages will be shared between ESA, the Commission and EEA. A Steering Committee will be set up with representatives from all contributing organisations, namely the Commission, ESA, EEA and participating countries. The GMES Land Monitoring Implementation Group for land monitoring established by DG Enterprise will play an advisory role for interlinking with other GMES services. GMES LMCS Implementation Group Steering Committee (EEA, ESA, EC, Member Countries) ESA / JRC (WP 1) EEA (WP 2,3,4,5,6,7) NRCs National LULC projects Service providers Figure 1. Organisational chart All products have to be available for use by the end of All land cover data will be freely available for any (commercial or non-commercial) applications. Ortho-rectified images will be available to participating organisations. The satellite mosaics will be freely accessible as web map service. SOME TECHNICAL DETAILS Under WP1 (responsible: ESA and JRC) SPOT-4 data will be acquired for the period of 2006 ± 1 year. Participating countries define optimal acquisition windows. In case of insufficient coverage, SPOT-5 or IRS P6 LISS III data will be used for filling the gaps. In addition to the high-resolution coverage, multi-temporal (2 dates) IRS P6 AWiFS data will also be acquired. The high-resolution SPOT-4 and the lower resolution IRS multi-temporal data together make up IMAGE

6 Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn, September 2006 Defined pixel size of orthocorrection is 20 m and 50 m, while geometric precision is 20 m and 50 m for SPOT-4 and AwiFS, respectively. Seamless image mosaic will be created using SPOT-4 as well as IRS AWiFS data. Mosaics will provide high-quality background image reference layer within the European spatial data infrastructure. In situ and ancillary data collection means (WP2), that countries will make available all those national data (e.g. GCPs for orthocorrection, DEM, topographic maps, aerial photos) that are required to derive the planned land cover layers. LUCAS 2006 (LU/LC codes, field photographs) available in 11 countries is planned to use as ground truth to improve classification results. Under WP3 CLC-change (between 2000 and 2006) will be derived by using image-to-image comparison between IMAGE2000 and IMAGE2006. All land cover changes larger than 5 ha have to be mapped. The standard CLC nomenclature will be used with 44 classes. CLC2006 will be generated in GIS by adding together CLC2000 and CLC-change. Under WP4 two high resolution layers are derived: built-up area and forest area. The planned minimum mapping unit is 1 ha, which is a very significant improvement in spatial resolution compared to the 25 ha MMU of CLC. Expected accuracy is 85%. On the top of the built-up layer, the percent imperviousness will be determined. WP5 includes quality control of all products (IMAGE2006 and land cover). Verification (applied during production) will have the purpose to eliminate inconsistencies and improve the quality. Validation (to be done after completing the database) has the purpose to inform users about the achieved accuracy. REFERENCES i EEA Strategy ii Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES): From Concept to Reality (COM(2005) 565 final) iii JRC, EEA: IMAGE2000 and CLC2000 Products and Methods, EUR EN iv Büttner G, Feranec J, Jaffrain G, Mari L, Maucha G, Soukup T, The CORINE Land Cover 2000 Project. EARSeL eproceedings 3(3), pp v Di Gregorio A, Land Cover Classification System. Classification Concept and User Manual (UNEP, FAO) 190 pp. 207