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This viewer provides statistics on spatial extent and land use distribution of floodplain areas of Europe. Here, floodplains are defined as the flood prone area, i.e. the area that would be flooded during a 100-year flood, if there were no flood protection in place. Most flood prone areas are, however, protected against flooding. The statistics are presented in a series of dashboards providing an overview of floodplain characteristics, by country, by river basin districts, and in Natura 2000 sites. The statistics include the extent of floodplains, their ecosystem distribution based on MAES classification and the Copernicus Riparian Zone Products, as well as land cover flows between 2000 and 2018.
Many global policy frameworks, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),directly and indirectly address land and soil. Many of these SGDs cannot be achieved without healthysoils and a sustainable land use. Below is an overview of the SDGs with strong links to soil.
For visualisation purposes, the initial 100 m spatial resolution Corine Land Cover dataset was re-sampled to a 10 km2 grid. The observation periods can be visualised by activating the 'layers' icon and selecting the respective periods.
This map shows the loss and gain of arable land and permanent crops. Changes are monitored at 1 ha level whereas the map is aggregated in a 10 km2 grid.
The map viewer of the Integrated Data Platform visualizes spatial datasets by web map services. Those spatial datasets are selected which are frequently used in assessments. The web map viewer enables spatial overlays so that the datasets can be interactively explored. Through exploring the datasets their potentials in environmental assessments can be better understood.
The map shows the calculated nitrogen surplus (inputs minus crop removal) and exceedance of critical nitrogen inputs to agricultural land in view of adverse impacts on water
Soil contains significant amounts of carbon and nitrogen, which can be released into the atmosphere depending on how we use the land. Clearing or planting forests, the melting of permafrost can tilt the greenhouse gas emission balance one way or the other. Climate change can also substantially alter what farmers can produce and where.
Soil plays a crucial role in nature’s cycles, including the nutrient cycle, which involves how much soil organic matter — i.e. carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus — is taken up and stored in soil. Organic compounds, such as leaves and root tips, are broken down to simpler compounds by organisms living in soil before they can be used by plants. Some soil bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into mineral nitrogen, which is essential for plant growth. Fertilisers introduce nitrogen and phosphates to induce plant growth but not all amounts are taken up by plants. The excess can enter rivers and lakes and affect life in these water ecosystems.
Europe's land and soil face a number of pressures, including urban expansion, contamination from agriculture and industry, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation, low crop diversity, soil erosion and extreme weather events linked to climate change. Greener cities with cleaner energy and transport systems, a green infrastructure connecting green areas, less intensive sustainable agricultural practices can help make Europe's land use more sustainable and soils healthier.
Europe’s land cover has remained relatively stable since 2000, with about 25 % covered by arable land and permanent crops, 17 % by pastures and 34 % by forests. At the same time, cities and concrete infrastructures continue to expand and the total area used for agriculture decreased. Although artificial surfaces cover less than 5 % of the wider EEA territory, a sizeable area still became sealed (covered by concrete or asphalt) between 2000 and 2018. The good news is that the rate of increase in artificial surface areas has slowed down in recent years.
Map of accumulation rates of Cadmium (left) and Copper (right) for the year 2010 in agricultural top soils (upper 20 cm). Data on: (i) manure application, affecting metal inputs, is based on livestock statistics from EUROSTAT, (ii) fertilizer inputs and crop yields , affecting metal uptake, are based on FAOstat, and (iii) soil metal concentrations, affecting metal leaching, are based on GEMAS (Reimann et al. 2014a,b)
This interactive data viewer provides a set of dashboards giving an overview of the land take and net land take processes for Europe (EEA39 and EU28) derived from the CORINE land cover data series. Statistics are derived for every 6 years of the acquisition period, as well as for the entire period (2000-2018). The viewer facilitates the assessment of land take over a specific period as well as the land use drivers of the observed changes, which can be analyzed within user defined spatial units such as administrative regions, biogeographical regions or land cover classes.
Map of Copper concentrations in European Union agricultural top soils (upper 20 cm).
This interactive viewer shows land recycling status and change accounts for major European Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). Land recycling addresses the reuse of abandoned, vacant or underused urban land for new developments. Land recycling is considered a response to land take within FUAs, i.e. urban development on arable land, permanent crop land or semi-natural areas. It is a key planning instrument for achieving the goal of no net land take by 2050 (EC, 2016).
The intensity of land take is calculated as land take in the given period as a percentage of the area of artificial surfaces in 2000. For easier comparability, land take is summarised within NUTS3 regions.
Ecosystem type map V2.1 - all classes - (EUNIS Level 2) derived from CORINE Land Cover and additional spatial explicite european datasets according to defined rule set. The rule set builds on the crosswalk between EUNIS nomenclature and CORINE Land Cover nomenclature. The multiple assignements are resolved using additional data like Art. 17 reporting data on habitat types, soil data, HANTS phenological data, potential natural vegetation, elevation zones, etc.
The dataset combines the Copernicus land service portfolio and marine bathymetry and seabed information with the non-spatial EUNIS habitat classification for a better biological characterization of ecosystems across Europe. As such it represents probabilities of EUNIS habitat presence for each MAES ecosystem type.
Land recycling is still low in all European countries: on average, land recycling accounted for only 13.5 % of total land consumption in European cities in the 2006-2012 period. The land use densification process, i.e. when land development makes maximum use of existing infrastructure, accounts for the largest proportion of land recycling. However, in most countries, land take dominates over densification in total land management with the exception of Finland and France. Grey recycling, i.e. internal conversions between residential and/or non-residential land cover types, is secondary to densification, ranging from 14 % to less than 1 % of total land consumption. Land take predominates over grey recycling in total land management in all countries. Green recycling, i.e. the development of green urban areas using previously built-up areas, is an important trend that reverses soil sealing, but it is a marginal process in all countries and, on average, it accounts for only 0.2 % of total land consumption.
Land recycling addresses the reuse of abandoned, vacant or underused urban land for new developments within FUAs (Functional Urban Areas, i.e. urban agglomerations). Land recycling is considered a response to land take within FUAs, i.e. urban development on arable land, permanent crop land or semi-natural areas. It is a key planning instrument for achieving the goal of no net land take by 2050 (EC, 2016).
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/find/global or scan the QR code.
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