DATASET

Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union

Collection: LUCAS : Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey 

Description

Accurately characterizing land surface changes with Earth Observation requires geo-localized ground truth. In the European Union (EU), a tri-annual surveyed sample of land cover and land use has been collected since 2006 under the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS). A total of 1,351,293 observations at 651,780 unique locations for 117 variables along with 5.4 million photos were collected during five LUCAS surveys. Until now, these data have never been harmonised into one database, limiting full exploitation of the information. This paper describes the LUCAS point sampling/surveying methodology, including collection of standard variables such as land cover, environmental parameters, and full resolution landscape and point photos, and then describes the harmonisation process. The resulting harmonised database is the most comprehensive in-situ dataset on land cover and use in the EU. The database is valuable for geo-spatial and statistical analysis of land use and land cover change. Furthermore, its potential to provide multi-temporal in-situ data will be enhanced by recent computational advances such as deep learning.

Contact

Email
raphael.dandrimont (at) ec.europa.eu

Contributors

  • Alessandra Palmieri
  • Beatrice Eiselt
  • Guido Lemoine
  • Hannes Isaak Reuter
  • Laura Martinez-Sanchez
  • Marijn van der Velde
  • Momtchil Iordanov
  • Paolo Dominici
  • Raphael d'Andrimont
  • Javier Gallego
  • Christian Joebges

How to cite

Palmieri, Alessandra; Eiselt, Beatrice; Lemoine, Guido; Reuter, Hannes Isaak; Martinez-Sanchez, Laura; van der Velde, Marijn; Iordanov, Momtchil; Dominici, Paolo; D'Andrimont, Raphael; Gallego, Javier; Joebges, Christian (2020): Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] doi: 10.2905/f85907ae-d123-471f-a44a-8cca993485a2 PID: http://data.europa.eu/89h/f85907ae-d123-471f-a44a-8cca993485a2

Keywords

agriculture big data computer vision Copernicus cropland deep learning eurostat geo-spatial GPS ground truth land cover remote sensing soil Statistics survey water management in-situ

Data access

Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union
URL 
  • The data are published with a publication describing how it was collected and organised along with some information about the data.

    Please refer to "Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union".

    d'Andrimont, R., Yordanov, M., Martinez-Sanchez, L., Eiselt, B., Palmieri, A., Dominici, P., Gallego, J., Reuter, H.I., Joebges, C., Lemoine, G. and van der Velde, M., 2020. Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union.

    The folder "LUCAS_harmonised" contains the following subfolders and files:

    ├── 0_releaseNote.txt

    ├── 1_table

    ├── lucas_harmo_exif.zip

    ├── lucas_harmo_uf_2006.zip

    ├── lucas_harmo_uf_2009.zip

    ├── lucas_harmo_uf_2012.zip

    ├── lucas_harmo_uf_2015.zip │

    ├── lucas_harmo_uf_2018.zip │

    └── lucas_harmo_uf.zip

    ├── 2_geometry

    ├── LUCAS_gps_geom.zip

    ├── LUCAS_th_geom.zip

    └── LUCAS_trans_geom.zip

    ├── 3_supporting

    ├── C3_legends.xls

    ├── lucas_harmo_record_descriptor.xls

    └── LUCAS-Variable_and_Classification_Changes.xlsx

    └── 4_mappings

    ├── 2006_lucas_harmo_allVars.csv

    ├── 2009_lucas_harmo_allVars.csv

    ├── 2012_lucas_harmo_allVars.csv

    ├── 2015_lucas_harmo_allVars.csv

    ├── 2018_lucas_harmo_allVars.csv

    ├── columnRename.csv

    ├── manChangedVars.csv

    └── RecodeVars.csv

Publications

Publication 2020
Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union
D`andrimont, R., Yordanov, M., Martinez Sanchez, L., Eiselt, B., Palmieri, A., Dominici, F., Gallego Pinilla, F., Reuter, H.I., Joebges, C., Lemoine, G. and Van Der Velde, M., Harmonised LUCAS in-situ land cover and use database for field surveys from 2006 to 2018 in the European Union, SCIENTIFIC DATA, ISSN 2052-4463 (online), 7, 2020, p. 352, JRC120678.
  • NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, LONDON, ENGLAND
Publication page 
  • Abstract

    Accurately characterizing land surface changes with Earth Observation requires geo-located ground truth. In the European Union (EU), a tri-annual surveyed sample of land cover and land use has been collected since 2006 under the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS). A total of 1351293 observations at 651780 unique locations for 106 variables along with 5.4 million photos were collected during five LUCAS surveys. Until now, these data have never been harmonised into one database, limiting full exploitation of the information. This paper describes the LUCAS point sampling/surveying methodology, including collection of standard variables such as land cover, environmental parameters, and full resolution landscape and point photos, and then describes the harmonisation process. The resulting harmonised database is the most comprehensive in-situ dataset on land cover and use in the EU. The database is valuable for geo-spatial and statistical analysis of land use and land cover change. Furthermore, its potential to provide multi-temporal in-situ data will be enhanced by recent computational advances such as deep learning.

Geographic areas

European Union

Temporal coverage

From date To date
2006-01-01 2018-01-01

Additional information

Published by
European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Created date
2020-08-18
Modified date
2023-09-29
Issued date
2020-08-18
Language(s)
English
Data theme(s)
Agriculture, fisheries, forestry and food, Environment
Update frequency
irregular
Identifier
http://data.europa.eu/89h/f85907ae-d123-471f-a44a-8cca993485a2
Popularity