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A tremendous effort has been already invested in soil monitoring in Europe, at country and at EU levels. However, there is no comprehensive and updated body of knowledge for identifying healthy soils and those that are degraded and require protection.
This report analyses data from the Urban Atlas of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. It focuses on land use changes (land take, soil sealing) and socio‑economic trends in 662 functional urban areas — cities and their commuting zones — in the EU and the UK.
This report was initiated following the EEA's 2018 assessment of the status of and pressures on European waters, to highlight the role of agriculture in achieving an improved status of surface water and groundwater in future river basin management plans
Land use and land use change are fundamental for sustainable resource use and the delivery of ecosystem services, including the provision of food, nutrient cycling and climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. Land resources are part of our shared natural capital and must be well managed to maintain a healthy environment and human well-being (EEA, 2019b). As such, only if land use and its impacts are properly addressed is progress towards sustainable development in Europe possible. Land-use related policies require the development of harmonised datasets, transparent methodologies and easily interpretable statistics. Land accounts fit the bill, describing how land resource stocks change over time. This briefing describes the use of the EEA’s Integrated Data Platform and CORINE Land cover data for transparent, repeatable and efficient land accounting.
This report describing the state of nature in the EU is based on reports from Member States under the Birds (2009/147/EC) and the Habitats (92/43/EEC) directives and on subsequent assessments at EU or EU biogeographical levels. In addition to an overview on species and habitats status, both at national and EU levels, it also addresses the status of the Natura 2000 network and its possible contribution to the status of species and habitats. Finally, the report provides results on progress towards Targets 1 and 3 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy.
Despite a strong policy framework and significant efforts by Member States (MSs) to halt biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation in Europe, the conservation status of protected species and habitats continues to decline along with the provision of ecosystem services. The new EU biodiversity strategy to 2030 addresses this decline with a plan to ‘build a truly coherent Trans-European Nature Network’. This will be built on the existing Natura 2000 network by analysing the potential connectivity between Natura 2000 sites using green infrastructure (GI) landscape elements important for delivering ecosystem services.
Knowledge for transition to a sustainable Europe
We cannot live without healthy land and soil. It is on land that we produce most of our food and we build our homes. For all species — animals and plants living on land or water — land is vital. Soil — one of the essential components of land — is a very complex and often undervalued element, teeming with life. Unfortunately, the way we currently use land and soil in Europe and in the world is not sustainable. This has significant impacts on life on land.
Climate change affects agriculture in a number of ways. Changes in temperature and precipitation as well as weather and climate extremes are already influencing crop yields and livestock productivity in Europe. Weather and climate conditions also affect the availability of water needed for irrigation, livestock watering practices, processing of agricultural products, and transport and storage conditions. Climate change is projected to reduce crop productivity in parts of southern Europe and to improve the conditions for growing crops in northern Europe. Although northern regions may experience longer growing seasons and more suitable crop conditions in future, the number of extreme events negatively affecting agriculture in Europe is projected to increase.
Maintaining 'natural capital', i.e. ecosystems and the services they provide, is fundamental to human economic activity and well-being. The need to conserve and enhance natural capital is therefore an explicit policy target in the EU's Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 and its Seventh Environment Action Programme. Approaches to measuring the stocks of natural resources that yield benefits as natural capital have gained considerable traction in recent decades. By providing regular, objective data that are consistent with wider statistical data, natural capital accounting can provide the fundamental evidence base required for informing economic and environmental decision making that delivers on these ambitions for natural capital.
Green infrastructure is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas, which include other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. These include water purification, air quality, space for recreation and climate mitigation and adaptation. This network of green (land) and blue (water) spaces can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens' health and quality of life. It also supports a green economy, creates job opportunities and enhances biodiversity. To maximise the benefits it provides, GI should be an essential component of spatial and physical planning. Developing GI is a key step towards successfully implementing the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy. Target 2 of the strategy requires that ‘by 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15 % of degraded ecosystems.’
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 calls on Member States to carry out a mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES, Maes et al., 2013). As such, an EU-wide ecosystem assessment was launched to provide harmonised information on the condition of ecosystems and biodiversity, and their capacity to provide ecosystem services. The assessment will provide data for the final evaluation of the EU biodiversity strategy in 2020. This briefing presents recent progress in mapping broad ecosystem types and their associated habitats at European level.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 calls on Member States to carry out a mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES, Maes et al., 2013). As such, an EU-wide ecosystem assessment was launched to provide harmonised information on the condition of ecosystems and biodiversity, and their capacity to provide ecosystem services. The assessment will provide data for the final evaluation of the EU biodiversity strategy in 2020. This briefing presents recent progress in mapping broad ecosystem types and their associated habitats at European level. This mapping uses spatially explicit land cover information, mostly based on the Copernicus service portfolios, the habitat classification of the European Nature Information System EUNIS (EEA, 2017) and other spatially referenced data sets. The work is also an essential input to the EU-level mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services following the MAES analytical framework (Maes et al., 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The 2011 Roadmap to a resource efficient Europe states, in its milestone of actions to address land as a resource, that 'By 2020, EU policies take into account their direct and indirect impact on land use in the EU and globally. This report presents a methodology for the assessment of European Union (EU) policies in terms of their land-related implications in Europe and provides an initial testing of the methodology across key EU policies and two in-depth case studies, which focus on Cohesion Policy spending on transport in Poland and Spain.
In this report, we have explored the notion of soil as an integral part of ecosystems and natural capital, and thus focused on the stock of the soil resource and the flows of valuable goods and services that can be derived from this stock. The concept of natural capital recognises soil as an asset that is of use and benefit to society (also called a 'productive' asset). Putting soil within the framework of the land system allows a connection to be made with governance, including soil resource efficiency.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/landuse/publications/publications_topic or scan the QR code.
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