1 October 2010

The domain  (land cover and land use, soil  and landscape) contains statistical tables on land cover and land use in general. In addition there are tables on visible animal grazing, irrigation, forest species and landscape features. The data have been collected throug the LUCAS survey in spring-autums 2009. The statistics are presented at NUTS0, NUTS1 and NUTS 2 levels.

LUCAS Survey 2009 -  Informative content

LUCAS is the acronim of Land Use and Cover Area frame Survey.  In the LUCAS survey  235 000 points were visited by 500 field surveyors on the spot. Those spots were selected from a standard 2 km grid with in total around 1 million points all over the EU. The land cover and the visible land use were classified according to the harmonized LUCAS land cover and land use nomenclatures. The aim of the LUCAS survey is to gather harmonised information on land use/cover and their changes over time. In addition the survey provides territorial information facilitating the analysis of the interactions between agriculture, environment and countryside (such as irrigation, land management ect.).

The LUCAS classification is characterised by:

1. clear separation for land cover and land use
2. full hierarchy  
3. comparability with other existing land cover/use systems.

• Separation for land cover and land use

While reading the results and comparing them with other sources it is important to have in mind that the LUCAS survey clearly distinguishes between land cover and land use.

Most of the existing information on land cover and land use is based on mixed nomenclatures of land cover and land use (i.e. the CORINE Land Cover classification).

When data from the two different dimensions need to be matched, compared and/or combined this distinction is particularly worthwhile. For example, land cover 'grassland' relates to the actual coverage of the soil (basically spontaneous vegetation) while its use can vary from private gardens to public parks to agriculture and others. Grassland with agricultural use is an important component of the Utilized Agricultural Area and can be derived combining land cover and use.

• Comparability with other sources

'Woodland ' has been defined in a way that allows to provide estimates  compatible  with FAO ones. In particular the comparability with FAO forest classification has been strengthened with the inclusion  of new variables (area size, height of trees, width of features, percentage of land cover).

The heading "Total woodland" in LUCAS classification includes: 'Forest' and 'other wooded area' as defined according to FAO standards and other areas covered by trees not respecting FAO definition.

The European legislation adopted the FAO forest classification: Reg (EC) No 2152/2003 of 17/11/2003 concerning monitoring of forests and environmental interactions in the Community - Forest Focus. According to the Regulation the following definitions apply: 'Forest' means land with tree crown cover of more than 10% and area of more than 0,5ha. The trees should be able to reach a minimum height of 5 am at maturity in situ; 'other wooded land' means land either with a tree crown cover of 5 to 10% of trees able to reach a height of 5 m at maturity in situ, or a crown cover of more than 10% of trees not able to reach a height of 5 m at maturity in situ and shrub or bush cover.

Forest types have been introduced for forestry areas, in line with the EUNIS classification on forests (http://eunis.eea.europa.eu/about.jsp), thus receiving more information on forest biotopes.

The land cover classification contains 8 main land cover categories: artificial land, cropland, woodland, shrubland, grassland, bare land,  water and wetland. In total there are  77 classes for land cover. Land use classification contains 15 main classes and 34 classes in total.  For more details, please consult Annex 1. 

Not applicable

The main statistical variables collected in the LUCAS survey are: Land Cover, Land Use and Landscape indicators.

The  Land cover is the physical cover of the earth's surface and the land use is the  socio-economic function of the land. Land Cover and Land Use are defined in the the Eurostat "Manual of Concepts on Land Cover and Land Use Information Systems".

The two concepts (land cover and land use) are clearly distinguished in the nomenclature of the LUCAS survey. This distinction is particularly worthwhile and allows also the analysis of the interactions between the two (cover and use). For example, land cover 'grassland' relates to the actual coverage of the soil while its use can vary from private gardens to public parks to agriculture and others. Grassland with agricultural use is an important component of the Utilized Agricultural Area and can be derived combining the two attribute (land cover and use) referring to the same point.

As far as the land use is concerned, it is worthwhile to specify that the figures refer specifically to the use of the land for which any sign is visible in the ground.  Therefore data reported in any table referring to the use has to be interpreted as the 'visible use'. As an example if a piece of land is regularly used for leisure purposes but no signs are visible on the spot, such a use will not be recorded by the surveyor and will not appear in the figures unless auxiliary data have been used for supporting data collection.

Compatibility of the adopted definitions with the main international concepts and definitions is guaranteed. Additional parameters (as height of trees, area size, wide of features) have been introduced where needed to allow the match while keeping a certain level of independency and flexibility in the main item classification.

This is the reason why the heading "Total woodland" in LUCAS classification includes: 'Forest' and 'other wooded area' as defined according to FAO standards and other areas covered by trees not respecting FAO definition.

Landscape indicators have been computed on the basis of the information collected along the 250m transect (presence of land cover and of linear elements).

Published Landscape indicators consist of the following: 1) Richness; 2) Shannon Diversity; 3) Shannon Evenness; 4) Structure index 5) Dissection indexes.

The statistical unit is a portion of land of circular shape and a conventional dimension of 1.5 meter radius (extended to 20 meters in specific cases). Please refer to Annex 6 - Instructions for surveyors, for more detailed information.

The "reference population" is the EU territory (area).

The reference area is the total area of the EU countries included in the survey with the exception of the following territories (islands) :

• Canarie e Baleari - 7400 km² +5000 km²  (ES)
• Azzorre e Madeira - 2333 km² +828 km²  (PT)
• Western+Orkney+Shetland - 3071 km² +990 km² +1466 km²  (UK)

The area of this territories sum up around 5/₀₀₀ of the total area of EU.

Due to the difficulties to reach points located in very remote areas, points to be visited in the field were selected among those:

• belonging to mainland (small islands not connected to mainland by bridges were excluded);
• located in areas with elevation below 1000 meters.

As a consequence:

• in the 23 Countries covered by 2009 round, 6 out of 248 NUTS2 regions were not surveyedand no estimates are available for them;
• types of land cover that mainly appear at a high altitude or in inlands could be underestimated (lakes, permanent snow).

The list of the missing NUTS2 includes Illes Balears (ES53), Ceuta (ES63) and Melilla (ES64) in Spain ,  Åland (FI20) in Finland, Voreio Aigaio (GR41) and Notio Aigaio (GR42) in Greece for a total of 15,412 km2. Those NUTS2 area correspond respectively to 8%, 0.03% 100% and 52% of the total area of NUTS1 they belong to (Este, Sur, Åland, Nisia Aigaiou and Kriti).

2009; please see paragraph 5.

Not applicable for this kind of data

Land Cover and Land Use are expressed in Km² , while for landscape indicators relative % frequency are given.

Data refers to 2009 for all EU Member States; data for Bulgaria and Romania refers to 2008.

The LUCAS survey is part of the Community Statistical Programme 2008-2012

(http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:344:0015:0043:EN:PDF)

LUCAS Survey is a Eurostat data collection.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

LUCAS data presented in the tables are not confidential.

Rules applied to microdata guarantee the confidentiality. Under specific circumstances geographical coordinates of the point might be rounded (this treatment is equivalent to areal aggregation).

Microdata for reserch purposes are released after signature of a contract.

Tables on specific domains (forestry, irrigtion, grazing) will be released in the next months.

Release calendar access will be available in the coming dedicated section (LUCAS web page).

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Dissemination format') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

LUCAS survey is a structural survey. The first EU wide campaign took place in 2008/2009. By the end of 2011 all results will be published; periodicity of next survey is currently under discussion.

News releases on-line.

 Dissemination plan of LUCAS results foresees Statistics in Focus in the coming months.

Please consult free data on-line or refer to contact details.

Micro - Data are confidential and can be released only for research purpose under signature of a standard contract. They will be available in the coming months.

Not applicable

98% of the required applicable documentation is provided. 

Relevant Quality documentation can be found in the Annexes.

Please refer to Annex 2 - Quality Assurance

In the framework of Eurostat Quality Assurance Framework, LUCAS survey underwent an External Peer review. Result from the final assessment can be found in Annex 3.

So far the 2001-2003-2006 LUCAS data (during the pilot phase) have been used by four main types of users: A) Eurostat  internal use  (12% of the contracts) B) Use by the other DGs and European Institutions: mainly the JRC, EEA, RTD, ENTR (GMES) either directly by the DGs or through external contracts (62 %), C) Use for national purposes by national authorities (10 %) D) Research purposes by universities and research institutions (16 %).

No feedback analysis

Not Applicable

The accuracy is tackled at Eurostat level, by eliminating as much as possible non-sampling errors and  by calculating sampling errors.  

The missing data phenomena is almost negligible in the survey. In case surveyors could not reach the points they were obliged to fill in the field form on the basis of the information that he/she could guess from orthophotos.

Please refer to paragraph 14.3 for further information.

Detailed quality report will be disseminated in the coming months.

Sampling error of the estimates will be disseminated in the coming weeks in the form of coefficient of variation (cv%).

please refer to Annex 4 - Non Sampling Error

Data collection took place between spring and autumn 2009, and the statistics are  published according to the schedule in early October  2010. 

100%

Fully harmonisation and comparability

2009 is the first release of LUCAS data.

While reading the results and comparing them with other sources it is important to have in mind that the LUCAS survey clearly distinguishes between land cover and land use.

'Woodland ' has been defined in a way that allows to provide estimates  compatible  with FAO ones. In particular the comparability with FAO forest classification has been strengthened with the inclusion  of new variables (area size, height of trees, width of features, percentage of land cover).

The heading "Total woodland" in LUCAS classification includes: 'Forest' and 'other wooded area' as defined according to FAO standards and other areas covered by trees not respecting FAO definition.

Despite this effort of harmonization of the definition some differences (sometimes not negligible) can be observed when comparing different sources. These differences can be due to the following reasons:

• Different methodologies;
• Certain margin of subjectivity in the application of the definitions and the possibility to clearly distinguish between coverage and use in the figures available from other domains;
• Variability of the estimates due to the recourse to the sampling methodology;

All these explanation apply for example to the comparison between cropland in LUCAS and the figures on crops coming from other sources (Farm Structure Survey, Crop Statistics). The LUCAS survey collects indeed land cover and land use independently. For this reason for example area covered by 'grassland' not belonging to farms and not used for agriculture are nonetheless classified as grassland. Its use might vary from private gardens to public parks to agriculture and others. Grassland with agricultural use is an important component of the Utilized Agricultural Area and can be derived in the LUCAS classification combining land cover and use attributions.

The coherence between the total area of the countries and their split according to land cover and land use is guaranteed by definition.

A standardized methodology and nomenclature has been applied in all the countries and from one round to another since 2006.

Therefore the internal coherence is perfectly assured.

The total budget for the LUCAS 2009 round was 6,42 million euro.  6.2 million euro was tendered out for the data collection and production and 0.22 million euro for the external quality  control. There was no burden on respondents, since sampling units were visited by a surveyor  without any interaction with the land owner.

No revisions foreseen.

Not applicable

The source of data is an Area Frame survey.

LUCAS (land use/cover area frame survey) is a field survey, carried out on a sample of points spread over the entire territory of the European Union; data on land cover and land use is collected and landscape photographs are taken, enabling detection of changes in land cover/use and in European landscapes.

The harmonized and well-tested area frame sampling methodology and the differentiated nomenclature for land cover and land use are considered to be the major strengths of the survey.

The aim of the LUCAS survey is to produce harmonised and comparables data on all dimensions of land cover and land use statistics at the European level, to monitor changes in land cover and land use, to analyse soil quality and to provide  ground truth and calibration for many space-borne information collection activities (such as CLC and GMES - global monitoring for Environment and Security).

LUCAS 2009 was carried out in 23 MS, covering 91% of total EU area. Around 21.000 km² (equivalent to 0.6 %)   of EU23 total area were not covered by the survey.

All the survey has been conceived and designed by Eurostat. The Contractors were responsible for the data collection in the 23 countries arranged in 5 Lots, the recruitment and management of the surveyors and the data delivery.

The campaign started in early April in Lithuania and Poland and was completed by end of October in Sweden. In 2009 round more than 500 surveyors were recruited for a total of 234,561 points to be visited in the ground. 

A lag-time of 3-5 years is the most favourable option. Currently the frequency of the survey is under discussion.

Please refer to Annex 5 - Field Form and Annex 6 - Instructions for the surveyor

Please refer to Annex 7 - LUCAS2009 Quality Control

The data processing involved two main stages:

• Data imputation for partial missing data concerning  imputation of detailed land cover classes for Photo-interpreted  points in cropland
• Estimates production of land cover and land use through traditional two-phase  estimator for stratification

Not applicable