CORINE land cover - research papers national and european policies

Abstract

This publication brings together information about applications from different European countries in support of the 6th Environmental Action Programme as well as several sectoral policies (e.g. agriculture, transport) based on CORINE Land Cover (CLC). CORINE Land Cover has been and continues to be one of the most frequently downloaded database from the EEA data service. During a country survey at the end of 2003 the national authorities responsible for the dissemination of national CLC data reported significant number of usages of the database by various organisations and for various fields of application, which subsequently sparked the idea for this publication. The list of sectors in which CLC data has been successfully used, is being led by the environment applications, followed by research, agriculture, spatial planning and education. Within the environmental domain itself, applications for nature conservation & biodiversity in combination with water related applications account for close to 40% of all these applications. Of increasing importance are transboundary applications, especially in the context of river basin management or spatial planning and since the completion of the CLC2000 database – the mapping and analysis of land cover changes. This publication does not aim to provide an exhaustive overview of existing applications or even fields of applications. This would never be possible as the number of applications is increasing every day. Therefore, the authors of this publication would like to encourage those who have developed new and interesting applications to submit a summary of them to the European Environment Agency for future inclusion in this “living” document.