COPERNICUS


REFERENCES

CLC+ and EAGLE

The EIONET Action Group on Land monitoring in Europe (in short: EAGLE working group) is an open assembly of technical experts from different EEA Member States, mostly in their roles as National Reference Centres (NRC) on land cover. The development of the EAGLE concept and methodology is being funded by the EEA within the framework of Copernicus programme. 

The objective of the working group the elaboration of a future-oriented conceptual solution that would support a European information capacity for land monitoring built on national data sources combined with pan-European information layers. This can be done by applying the approach of object-oriented data modelling in the field of land monitoring. The group´s conceptual development work is based on initial considerations of separating land cover from land use and further landscape characteristics, allowing a complete representation of land cover and land use as well as the use and integration of information from national and European data sets to support land monitoring.

The EAGLE working group has developed the concept of CLC+ and is currently following its operational implementation and supporting its validation and the development of first “instances”.

space4environment (Stefan Kleeschulte) is coordinating the EAGLE working group and the contracts with the European Environment Agency. 


Global Hot Spot Monitoring

The High Resolution Hot Spot Monitoring (HSM) activity of the Global Land Monitoring component of the Copernicus Land service provides detailed land information on specific areas of interest, answering to ad-hoc requests and responding to specific user requirements in mapping natural resources. The activity is directly supporting field projects and policies developed by the EU in the framework of EU international policy interests, within the domain of the sustainable management of natural resources, conservation and rural development. Hence, the HSM activity operates outside the EU territory and complements the products from the Global operations component.

The Copernicus High-Resolution Hot Spot Monitoring activity (C-HSM) delivers a global dataset of Key Landscapes for Conservation, which are characterized by pronounced anthropogenic pressures that require high mapping accuracy. Detailed land cover and land cover change map products are freely available through the activity and include extensive map production accuracy assessments. Without a complete understanding of the map products’ spatial, temporal, and logical consistencies, quality or quantified confidence levels, usability is reduced and can affect stakeholder decision-making and the implementation of sustainable solutions.

space4environment was part of a consortium led by IGN-FI responsible for the quality control of the products. 

Publication: Quality assurance and assessment framework for land cover maps validation in the Copernicus Hot Spot Monitoring activity (European Journal of Remote Sensing, 54:1, 538-557, DOI: 10.1080/22797254.2021.1978001)


Copernicus Space Component - Quality controlling of a Pan-European VHR 2018 satellite image coverage

Very High Resolution (VHR) image mosaics are part of the pan-European component of Copernicus Land Monitoring Services, managed by the European Environment Agency. The mosaics serve as input data to produce several Copernicus land monitoring datasets and services. The mosaics provide a cloud-free optical image coverage of over 6 million square kilometres covering of the 39 European States (EEA-39).

space4environment was part of the VHR2018 production consortium led by Airbus and led responsible for the internal quality assurance process to ensure the selection of cloud-free images for 39 European countries (EEA-39).

Copernicus Very High Resolution Image Mosaics


Header image: © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO