Land use

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Europe is one of the most intensively used continents on the globe, with the highest share of land used for settlement, production systems and infrastructure. Land is a finite resource: how it is used constitutes one of the principal reasons for environmental change, with significant impacts on quality of life and ecosystems, as well as on the management of infrastructure. More

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Restoring floodplains and wetlands offer value-for-money solution to river flooding

News 21 Nov 2017

Investing in ‘green infrastructure’ like restoring floodplains or wetlands to bolster flood prevention not only generates more environmental and socio-economic benefits, especially in the long term, but also lowers the amount of financial investment needed to defend against damaging floods. This is the conclusion of a new European Environment Agency (EEA) report published today, which assesses the green options available in building climate resilience in wake of the increased risk posed by river flooding.

Restoring floodplains and wetlands offer value-for-money solution to river flooding Investing in ‘green infrastructure’ like restoring floodplains or wetlands to bolster flood prevention not only generates more environmental and socio-economic benefits, especially in the long term, but also lowers the amount of financial investment needed to defend against damaging floods. This is the conclusion of a new European Environment Agency (EEA) report published today, which assesses the green options available in building climate resilience in wake of the increased risk posed by river flooding.

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Europe’s environment: the power of data and knowledge

Article 15 Mar 2018

Europe collects increasingly more data, enhancing our understanding of the environment. Earth observation data obtained through the European Union’s Copernicus programme presents new challenges and opportunities to improve our environmental knowledge. Combining up-to-date Copernicus data with our existing knowledge base, the European Environment Agency (EEA) aims to empower policy makers and citizens across Europe in taking measures to address local, national and global challenges.

Europe’s environment: the power of data and knowledge Europe collects increasingly more data, enhancing our understanding of the environment. Earth observation data obtained through the European Union’s Copernicus programme presents new challenges and opportunities to improve our environmental knowledge. Combining up-to-date Copernicus data with our existing knowledge base, the European Environment Agency (EEA) aims to empower policy makers and citizens across Europe in taking measures to address local, national and global challenges.

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Land system at European level — analytical assessment framework

Publication 15 Oct 2018

Land and soil provide vital resources to society such as food, feed, fuel, fibres and shelter. They also provide ecosystem services that support production functions, regulate the risk of natural hazards, and provide cultural and spiritual benefits. By using land, society alters and modifies the quantity and quality of these services, and the intrinsic potential for land benefits to mankind. To better manage its use of land and associated processes, society needs a systems (i.e. integrated) view on land. This briefing proposes an analytical framework that aims at developing a strategy for monitoring and integrated assessment of the state of land and its key resources.

Landscapes in transition — An account of 25 years of land cover change in Europe

Publication 07 Sep 2017

Landscape is one of the most precious assets contributing to Europe's cultural identity. As landscape is determined to a large extent by land use, the study of land use changes, especially through changes in the land cover, provides clues to the drivers of the transitions that landscape is currently going through. New data on land cover change in Europe up to 2012 show that total land cover change increased from the 2000‑2006 period to the 2006‑2012 period.

Land recycling in Europe

Publication 08 Dec 2016

Land take, or the change from non-artificial to artificial land cover, reflects on-going and often conflicting claims on land. Some of the land that is 'taken' for urban development is covered with an impervious surface, which severely hampers ecosystem functioning and the related delivery of ecosystem services. However, when land is 'recycled', land that was developed in the past and has become available for redevelopment again is reused. Urban densification, or infilling, can also prevent the consumption of land that may be very valuable for food production or recreation. In this report, the processes of recycling and densification are jointly referred to as 'land recycling in its broad sense'. Land recycling can be considered a response to the on-going pressures we as a society apply to our land resources, particularly in the urban fringe.

Urban sprawl in Europe - joint EEA-FOEN report

Publication 08 Jun 2016

This report provides a comparable measurement of urban sprawl for 32 European countries at three levels (the country level, the NUTS-2 region level and the 1-km2 cell level) and for two years (2006 and 2009). The analysis is based on the Copernicus system which monitors the Earth and collects data by different sources. This data provides information about a number of thematic areas, including land. Under land a pan-European component delivers information about various areas, including the level of sealed soil (imperviousness), through high resolution layers taken from satellite imagery. The analysis uses new urban sprawl metrics taking into account the way built-up areas are laid out and how they are used. It also looks at the factors which contribute to an increase or decrease in urban sprawl. The results confirm the conclusions of earlier EEA reports namely that in many parts of Europe current levels of urban sprawl have contributed to detrimental ecological, economic and social effects. This gives cause for concern and such effects may increase alongside planned urban development.

Land system at European level — analytical assessment framework Land and soil provide vital resources to society such as food, feed, fuel, fibres and shelter. They also provide ecosystem services that support production functions, regulate the risk of natural hazards, and provide cultural and spiritual benefits. By using land, society alters and modifies the quantity and quality of these services, and the intrinsic potential for land benefits to mankind. To better manage its use of land and associated processes, society needs a systems (i.e. integrated) view on land. This briefing proposes an analytical framework that aims at developing a strategy for monitoring and integrated assessment of the state of land and its key resources.

Landscapes in transition — An account of 25 years of land cover change in Europe Landscape is one of the most precious assets contributing to Europe's cultural identity. As landscape is determined to a large extent by land use, the study of land use changes, especially through changes in the land cover, provides clues to the drivers of the transitions that landscape is currently going through. New data on land cover change in Europe up to 2012 show that total land cover change increased from the 2000‑2006 period to the 2006‑2012 period.

Land recycling in Europe Land take, or the change from non-artificial to artificial land cover, reflects on-going and often conflicting claims on land. Some of the land that is 'taken' for urban development is covered with an impervious surface, which severely hampers ecosystem functioning and the related delivery of ecosystem services. However, when land is 'recycled', land that was developed in the past and has become available for redevelopment again is reused. Urban densification, or infilling, can also prevent the consumption of land that may be very valuable for food production or recreation. In this report, the processes of recycling and densification are jointly referred to as 'land recycling in its broad sense'. Land recycling can be considered a response to the on-going pressures we as a society apply to our land resources, particularly in the urban fringe.

Urban sprawl in Europe - joint EEA-FOEN report This report provides a comparable measurement of urban sprawl for 32 European countries at three levels (the country level, the NUTS-2 region level and the 1-km2 cell level) and for two years (2006 and 2009). The analysis is based on the Copernicus system which monitors the Earth and collects data by different sources. This data provides information about a number of thematic areas, including land. Under land a pan-European component delivers information about various areas, including the level of sealed soil (imperviousness), through high resolution layers taken from satellite imagery. The analysis uses new urban sprawl metrics taking into account the way built-up areas are laid out and how they are used. It also looks at the factors which contribute to an increase or decrease in urban sprawl. The results confirm the conclusions of earlier EEA reports namely that in many parts of Europe current levels of urban sprawl have contributed to detrimental ecological, economic and social effects. This gives cause for concern and such effects may increase alongside planned urban development.

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Boxplot of land recycling by Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) and country

Figure 27 Jul 2018

The boxplot shows land recycling as percentage of total land consumption for the period 2006-2012.

Ratio of green recycling to land take as an average of all functional urban areas (FUAs) by country

Data Visualization 27 Jul 2018

Ratio of densification to land take as an average of all functional urban areas (FUAs) by country

Data Visualization 27 Jul 2018

Land recycling and densification

Indicator Assessment 27 Jul 2018

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 (10 % of total land consumption). 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 and densification

GIS Map Application 24 Jul 2018

This web map application enables the user to visualise the land recycling indicator for each of the Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) by entering the name of a city in the search window. When clicking the city of interest on the map, the following statistics are displayed in a window: land recycling as a percentage of total land consumption and the three components of land recycling (densification, grey recycling and green recycling) as a proportion of land take. For the three land recycling components, values above 1 indicate that the particular land recycling component predominates over land take. Values below 1 indicate that land take predominates over the particular land recycling component. For a complete overview, consult our interactive data viewer (see assessment text).

Copernicus Land Monitoring Service - High Resolution Layers - Water and Wetness

Data 16 May 2018

The combined Water and Wetness product is a thematic product showing the occurrence of water and wet surfaces over the period from 2009 to 2015. Two products are available: o The main Water and Wetness (WAW) product with defined classes of (1) permanent water, (2) temporary water, (3) permanent wetness and (4) temporary wetness. o The additional expert product: Water & Wetness Probability Index (WWPI) The products show the occurrence of water and indicate the degree of wetness in a physical sense, assessed independently of the actual vegetation cover and are thus not limited to a specific land cover class and their relative frequencies.

Copernicus Land Monitoring Service - High Resolution Layers - Grassland

Data 16 May 2018

The main high resolution grassland product is the Grassland layer, a grassland/non-grassland mask for the EEA39 area. This grassy and non-woody vegetation baseline product includes all kinds of grasslands: managed grassland, semi-natural grassland and natural grassy vegetation. It is a binary status layer mapping grassland and all non-grassland areas in 20m and (aggregated) 100m pixel size. Two additional (expert) products complete the high resolution grassland product: the Ploughing Indicator (PLOUGH) and the Grassland Vegetation Probability Index (GRAVPI). While the PLOUGH concentrates on historic land cover features with the aim to indicate ploughing activities in preceding years, the GRAVPI provides a measure of classification reliability. GRAVPI is a 20m pixel size product, mapping on a range of 1-100 the class probability. PLOUGH is a 20m pixel size additional product, mapping from 1-6 the number of years since the last indication of ploughing.

Percentage of NUTS3 regions covered by high and very high fragmentation pressure classes

Figure 26 Apr 2018

The map shows the percentage of NUTS3 regions covered by high an very high fragmentation pressure classes. Fragmentation pressure classes express the number of meshes per 1000 km2.

Landscape fragmentation pressure from urban and transport infrastructure expansion

Indicator Assessment 26 Apr 2018

Large parts of Europe are highly fragmented because of transport infrastructure and urban expansion. The Atlantic and Continental biogeographical regions show by far the highest degree of fragmentation in Europe. Around 50 % of the Atlantic region and 40 % of the Continental region are highly fragmented. The area with the lowest fragmentation covers less than 10 % of these regions. In the Alpine, Macaronesian and Arctic biogeographical regions, less than 3 % of the area is highly fragmented. The Benelux countries are the most fragmented in Europe. In Luxembourg 93 % of the country is highly fragmented, while in Belgium the figure is 80 % and in the Netherlands 67 %. In eastern European countries, in the Mediterranean and in Ireland and Scotland the fragmenting pressure of urban and transport expansion is considerably weaker. Around 35 % of the cultivated areas, almost 30 % of grasslands and around 12 % of forests are under great fragmentation pressure. In contrast, close to 50 % of the area covered by mires, bogs, fens, heathland, scrub and tundra ecosystems are under low pressure by fragmentation. The forest ecosystems in the Alpine region are under the lowest pressure from fragmentation in Europe. All over Europe and in all the biogeographical regions, the fragmentation pressure is lower inside Natura 2000 sites than in their surrounding areas. Although cities and strongly populated areas are generally most fragmented in Europe, 50 % of sparsely populated regions e.g. in France and the Netherlands, are under great fragmentation pressure as well.

Fragmentation pressure of urban and transport infrastructure expansion

GIS Map Application 12 Jan 2018

Classes represent the number of meshes per 1 000 square kilometres. Light colours mean less fragmentation pressure and dark colours mean more fragmentation pressure exerted by urban and transport infrastructure expansion.