Agricultural Land Cover Data

Two land cover datasets are used in this book as exposure data for agricultural drought risk assessments:

CORINE Land Cover (CLC)¶

Full name: CORINE Land Cover — Coordination of Information on the Environment
Coverage: Europe, time steps 1990, 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2018
Resolution: 100 m in EPSG:3035 (LAEA Europe)
Source: land.copernicus.eu/en/products/corine-land-cover

CORINE Land Cover is coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA) as part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS). It provides a harmonised, pan-European land cover and land use inventory in 44 thematic classes arranged in a three-level nomenclature. The five available time steps (1990–2018) allow analysis of land cover change at decadal resolution across Europe. Agricultural classes include arable land, permanently irrigated land, vineyards, olive groves, pastures, and mixed cultivation patterns, among others.

Data citation: European Environment Agency (EEA) (2018)

Satellite-based Land Cover (CDS)¶

Full name: Land cover classification gridded maps from 1992 to present derived from satellite observations
Coverage: Global, 1992–present (annual)
Resolution: 300 m in WGS84 (EPSG:4326)
Source: cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/satellite-land-cover

This dataset is produced by the ESA Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) Land Cover project and distributed through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS). It classifies land surface into 38 classes using the UN Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). Annual coverage from 1992 onward makes it well suited for continuous time-series analysis of land use change. Two product versions are used: v2.0.7cds (1992–2015) and v2.1.1 (2016–present).

Data citation: Copernicus Climate Change Service, Climate Data Store (2017)

How do the two datasets compare?¶

Both datasets capture agricultural land cover, but differ in geographic scope, temporal resolution, and thematic detail: