Corine Land Cover (CLC) is a map of the European environmental landscape based on interpretation of satellite images. It provides comparable digital maps of land cover for each country for much of Europe. This is useful for environmental analysis and for policy makers.
Corine stands for Coordination of Information on the Environment. The EU established Corine in 1985 to create pan-European databases on land cover, biotopes (habitats), soil maps and acid rain.
The CLC1990 project was undertaken as a cross-border initiative by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland. The aim was to produce a land cover map for the entire island of Ireland.
The land cover database was based on the interpretation of satellite images for 1989 and 1990, with land cover types in 44 standard classes. The map was created in GIS ARC/INFO format, at an original scale of 1:100,000, which was consistent and comparable with similar land cover databases in other European countries.
The CLC2000 database was created by first assessing and correcting the existing CLC1990 land cover database and images for geometric and thematic content, then land cover changes were mapped using 2000 satellite imagery and ancillary data.
The production of the change and CLC2000 databases was greatly aided by the large amounts of ancillary data now available for Ireland since the original CLC1990 project.
The CLC2000 database is a valuable benchmark for Ireland. Over time it will help to monitor overall changes in our environment.
The European Environment Agency, in conjunction with the European Space Agency, the European Commission and member countries produced an update of the European CLC database as part of a Fast Track Service on Land as part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative. This update involved:
We participated in this update in our role as the Eionet National Reference Centre on Land Cover and Spatial Information. This has provided Ireland with another valuable database, CLC2006.
The distinction between land cover and land use is fundamental, and the two are often confused. They are defined as follows:
A land use is defined as a series of activities undertaken to produce one or more goods or services. A given land use may take place on one or several pieces of land, and several land uses may occur on the same piece of land.
Defining land use in this way provides a basis for precise and quantitative economic and environmental impact analysis, and permits precise distinctions between land uses if required.
It should be noted that CLC deals only with land cover and not land use.
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