Change in land use and land cover is the most noticeable and far-reaching of all environmental changes. Unsustainable land use change can impact human health, have a harmful effect on water, air, soil and biodiversity and conflict with land use planning. The EPA is the national focal point for European Land Use Land Cover activities. We continue to monitor changes in land cover and to assess the effects of these changes on the environment through our participation in a number of projects.
The EU initiative CORINE was set up in 1985. In 1990 a Corine database of land cover for Ireland was produced. This was updated in 2000 and again in 2006. Ireland's contribution of datasets through Corine has fulfilled the European primary purpose of enabling inter-country comparison of land cover across Europe.
During the ten years from 1990 to 2000, artificial surfaces increased in area from 1.5% to 1.9% of total land cover, caused by urban sprawl and developments in infrastructure and sports facilities. The six years between 2000 and 2006 experienced a 0.3% increase in artificial surfaces. A growth in forestry from 12% to 12.6% was witnessed during the same period.
Corine Land Cover databases are a valuable benchmark for Ireland in earth observations.
The EPA is currently running a pilot project to establish the suitability of the rule-based feature extraction and classification processing methods to a habitat mapping solution for a study area in Ireland. There is no published information for this project at present.
Find out more about Corine land cover in Ireland
