The LUM Geodatabase

What is it?

The LAMASUS land use management (LUM) geodatabase contains a series of spatial data sets, developed to support the modelling work in the LAMASUS project. The LUM geodatabase includes:  

  • Corine land cover annual time series from 2000 to 2018 based on Corine accounting layers for 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018 produced by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and indicators of change from the high-resolution land-cover time series produced by OpenGeoHub.  
  • Land use management layers for 2000, 2010 and 2018 for forest, cropland, grassland and urban land use management classes. The data sets were aggregated from 100 m to 1 km and NUTS2 levels using a procedure that involved fitting Corine land cover to official statistics on forest, cropland and grassland from FAO and Eurostat.  
  • Area estimates of changes in major land cover/land use types between 2000 and 2018 with uncertainty estimates. The uncertainties were calculated from a validated sample using Geo-Wiki and visual interpretation of satellite imagery with a time series tool to verify if changes in Corine had occurred. 

The LUM geodatabase covers detailed information on forest, cropland, grassland, and urban categories. Detailed definitions of the management classes are accessible here 

A presentation of the LUM geodatabase by Linda See, IIASA, is available on YouTube: click here.

More information about the methodology

  • Detailed information on the methodologies used in the development of the management classes as well as any validation undertaken, is available in D2.1  
  • Publications for data generated under the LAMASUS project:  
      • Malek, Ž., Schulze, K., Bartl, H., Keja, W., Petersen, J.-E., Tieskens, K. et al., (2024): Mapping livestock grazing in semi-natural areas in the European Union and United Kingdom, Landscape Ecology, 39, 31.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-024-01810-6  
      • Malek, Ž., Romanchuk, Z., Yashchun, O., Jones, G., Petersen, J.-E., Fritz, S., See, L. (2024): Improving the representation of cattle grazing patterns in Europe. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad858a 
      • Malek, Ž., Romanchuk, Z., Yashchun, O., See, L. (2024): A harmonized data set of livestock presence and grazing data for the European Union and neighbouring countries. Scientific Data, 11, 1136. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03983-w

Accessing the data

Datasets at 1 km2 resolution and NUTS2 (available for download)

  • The LUM classes have been aggregated to a 1 km grid (INSPIRE) and shares of NUTS2 regions, which can be downloaded from:  https://zenodo.org/records/13254324 
  • Note that these aggregated files are consistent with official statistics from the Forest Resources Assessment of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FRA-FAO) for forest areas and Eurostat for cropland and grassland areas.  
    100m resolution (viewable): 
    • Go to https://www.geo-wiki.org/ and click on Launch Geo-Wiki 
    • Register for an account or enter as a guest 
    • Select the LAMASUS Land Use Management Geodatabase branch from the dropdown box at the top left of the screen.

    How can you contribute ?

      • Provide feedback on a location classification at 100m resolution:  https://www.geo-wiki.org 
      • Help improve our methodology by classifying pictures used in the methodology using the Picture Pile app. Please download Picture Pile from App Store or Playstore.

      Feedback on the methodology will be collected until Summer 2025 and will be used to validate and improve our methodology further.

      Upcoming

      • The LUM geodatabase, in combination with environmental and economic impacts of management, is being used to identify high-need areas for action. Policy papers will be available in 2025. 
      • Papers on (a) the grassland management layers and (b) validation of the Corine time series layers and area estimates with uncertainty will be publicly released and made available through the LAMASUS website.
      • LAMASUS partners continue to monitor for the release of new data sets, particularly Corine land cover for 2024 and new Copernicus High-Resolution Layers on crop types and mowing events. Any new data will be described in D2.2.
      • A system for monitoring land use management to aid policy evaluation and the requirements for continuing such a monitoring system will be described in D2.4.