CORINE Land Cover and Changes (CLC and CHA, Lithuania) 2018

Corine Land Cover (CLC) provides consistent information on land cover and land cover changes across Europe. This inventory was initiated in 1985 (reference year 1990) and established a time series of land cover information with updates in 2000, 2006 and 2012, being the last one the 2018 reference year. CLC products are based on photointerpretation of satellite images by national teams of participating countries - the EEA member and cooperating countries – following a standard methodology and nomenclature with the following base parameters: 44 classes in the hierarchical three level Corine nomenclature; minimum mapping unit (MMU) for status layers is 25 hectares; minimum width of linear elements is 100 metres; minimum mapping unit (MMU) for Land Cover Changes (LCC) for the change layers is 5 hectares. CLC12_LT is produced by revising and correcting 2012 year Corine Land Cover database, according to 2012 IRS satellite images. CHA18_LT is a change database and is derived from satellite imagery by direct mapping of changes, taken place between two dates - 2012 and 2017 year, based on image-to-image comparison. CLC18_LT is produced by intersecting and unifying revised CLC12_LT and CHA18_LT change databases. Land cover and land use (LCLU) information is important not only for land change research, but also more broadly for the monitoring of environmental change, policy support, the creation of environmental indicators and reporting. CLC datasets provide important datasets supporting the implementation of key priority areas of the Environment Action Programmes of the European Union as protecting ecosystems, halting the loss of biological diversity, tracking the impacts of climate change, assessing developments in agriculture and implementing the EU Water Framework Directive, among others. More information about the Corine Land Cover (CLC) and Copernicus land monitoring data in general can be found at http://land.copernicus.eu/.