Land use and occupation chart 2015 Alto Tâmega e Barroso

The Land Use and Occupation Charter (COS) is a product of the Soil Occupation Monitoring System (SMOS), an innovative initiative, designed and developed by the Directorate-General of the Territory, with the aim of continuously producing cartographic information on land use and occupation. SMOS uses the latest developments in space technologies and Artificial Intelligence to create products with more detail, quality, speed and made available with open data policy. All products can be viewed on vismos (https://smos.dgterritorio.gov.pt/vi-smos). COS2015v2.0 is a thematic mapping of land use and occupation for mainland Portugal for the year 2015, and the Directorate-General of the Territory (DGT) is the entity responsible for its production. The COS2015v2.0 is an improved version of COS2015 (named COS2015v1.0) and was produced simultaneously with the new versions of COS for 2018 (COS2018v2.0), 2010 (COS2010v2.0), 2007 (COS2007v3.0) and 1995 (COS1995v2.0), with the aim of having a spatially and temporally consistent COS series. This series and the versions of the COS that integrate it replace from the date of its publication the previous ones, and these will be ineffective from that date. The COS2015v2.0 has 83 classes, i.e., 35 more classes than its original version (COS2015v1.0), now having the same number of classes as COS2018v2.0, COS2010v2.0 and COS2007v3.0. COS1995v2.0 has 44 classes. The map information of COS2015v2.0 is in vector format and divides the space into landscape units (polygons) that share the concepts of land use and occupation, not including any linear or punctual elements. The COS2015v2.0 has a minimum cartographic unit (UMC) of 1 ha, a minimum distance between lines of 20 m and the equivalent scale is 1:25 000. The nomenclature consists of a hierarchical system of land occupation/use classes and has 83 classes at the most detailed level. Each polygon of COS2015v2.0 is classified with the land use/occupancy code of each hierarchical level of the nomenclature. The limits of COS2015v2.0 at the border with Spain are those of the Official Administrative Charter of Portugal (CAOP) version 2015 and on the sea side are defined by photointerpretation. The improvement of COS2015v1.0 to produce COS2015v2.0 was based on visual interpretation of the same orthorectified aerial images (i.e., 50 cm spatial resolution and four spectral bands — blue, green, red and near infrared) used in the production of the original version. In the improvement process, as well as quality control, auxiliary databases from various sources were used, including intra-annual multi-temporal series of satellite images. Landscape units with a dimension below the CMU (1 ha) were generalised according to well-defined rules. The publication of the revised historical series (COS1995v2, COS2007v3, COS2010v2, COS2015v2 and COS2018v2) marks the integration of COS into SMOS, which also includes the Conjuncture Soil Occupation Charter (COSC). COS stands out for providing structural information and more related to land use. COSC has a conjunctural character and is more related to land use. COS remains the reference cartography at national level. It is important to keep in mind the differences between the two cartography. For example, an area of forest use and thus classified as COS, can be represented in COSC as Matos or spontaneous Herbaceous Vegetation if in that year it is temporarily deforested due to a cut or a fire. However, in the SOC this area continues to be classified as forest. COSC is a conjuncture cartography, so in medium-term planning and management, relevant mapping remains COS. COSC may be useful in short-term planning and programming exercises. If you are not familiar with the provision of spatial data through visualisation services (e.g. WMS) and download can be found in the Support Guides on the open data page of DGT (https://www.dgterritorio.gov.pt/dados-abertos).