Twenty Years of Land Accounts in Europe

Eva Ivits (), Erika Orlitova, Roger Milego, Gergely Maucha, Barbara Kosztra, Emanuele Mancosu, Jaume Fons, Mirko Gregor, Manuel Löhnertz and Gerard Hazeu
Additional contact information
Eva Ivits: European Environment Agency, Kongens Nytorv 6, 1050 Copenhagen, Denmark
Erika Orlitova: Gisat s.r.o., Milady Horákové 57a, 170 00 Praha, Czech Republic
Roger Milego: Departament de Geografia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici B, Carrer de la Fortuna, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Gergely Maucha: Land Monitoring Unit, Lechner Non-Profit Ltd., Budafoki út 59, 1111 Budapest, Hungary
Barbara Kosztra: Land Monitoring Unit, Lechner Non-Profit Ltd., Budafoki út 59, 1111 Budapest, Hungary
Emanuele Mancosu: European Topic Centre, University of Malaga, Ada Byron Research Building, 29010 Málaga, Spain
Jaume Fons: Departament de Geografia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici B, Carrer de la Fortuna, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Mirko Gregor: Space4environment, 48, rue Gabriel Lippmann, L-6947 Niederanven, Luxembourg
Manuel Löhnertz: Space4environment, 48, rue Gabriel Lippmann, L-6947 Niederanven, Luxembourg
Gerard Hazeu: Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University & Research, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-30

Abstract: Land use and its change impact food security, carbon cycling, biodiversity, and, hence, the condition of ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate change, support economic prosperity, and human well-being. To support and guide policy actions between the economy and the environment, harmonized time series datasets, transparent methodologies, and easily interpretable statistics are needed. Therefore, monitoring of the function and condition of lands and their change, along with properly agreed methodologies and freely accessible data, are essential. The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service has produced over 20 years of Corine Land Cover datasets for 39 countries in Europe, which allows continental-wide harmonized and comparable monitoring and accounting of land cover and land use change at a high thematic resolution and in a long time series (2000–2018). With the upcoming 2024 update, the time series will reach a unique product worldwide in terms of time series length, spatial resolution, extent, and thematic detail, enabling policymakers and the scientific community to address the main anthropogenic drivers of land and ecosystem degradation. This paper describes a unified approach for producing continental-wide land accounts that aligns with internationally agreed-upon standards for measuring the environment and its relationship with the economy. Furthermore, the study provides a harmonized time series of geospatial data for deriving land accounts and provides statistics of land cover and land use status and changes for a twenty-year period. All geospatial data and statistics presented in this paper are freely accessible and downloadable to serve other studies.

Keywords: land accounts; Copernicus Land Monitoring Service; Corine Land Cover; geospatial database; policy support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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