EUROPEAN LAND COVER MAPPING SYSTEMS FOR THE NATURAL AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Since 1985, European land cover mapping projects have been established to provide maps, a detailed and up-to-date portrayal of land cover from small to large scales. These programs offer technological and scientific support both globally and regionally, from major ecological systems to artificial features. The European Commission's Global Land Cover 2000 and the GlobCover (2004-2009), an ESA initiative, provide a global coverage of land cover maps, whereas the CORINE programme, initiated 1985 till 2006 focuses on land cover maps at a scale of 1:100000. Initial operations of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) land monitoring service, the "GIO land", include a land cover change product between 2006 and 2012 and a land cover product for 2012. All these systems use original geospatial data such as ground truth data, aerial and satellite imagery and a key feature of these maps, is that they are available at no cost to the end users, through specially designed geo-databases, to be easily implemented in various earth-related applications.