ANNEX IVSupplementary provisions
ANNEX IV THE TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE COPERNICUS LAND MONITORING SERVICE 1. SCOPE The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service shall provide users in the field of environment and other terrestrial applications with high quality information based on space data combined with other sources of data. The Service shall address a wide range of policies such as environment, agriculture, regional, development, transport, energy as well as climate change, at Union level and also at global level considering European Union commitments to international treaties and conventions. The Land Monitoring Service shall focus on the priorities already defined by a broad consultation amongst key users: relevant Commission services, the Copernicus User Forum, the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET) National Focal Points (NFPs), the Reference Centres (NRCs) and the International stakeholders including United Nations Agencies. 2. USER REQUIREMENTS AND MAIN DOMAINS OF APPLICATION The Copernicus Land Monitoring service shall comprise a global component including a systematic and a hot spot monitoring element, a pan-European component and a local component. The Global Land monitoring component shall support the Commission in several application domains. The products shall be used, amongst others, for crop, rangeland and drought monitoring, to support livestock management, for climate studies, for water quality assessment, for in-land water and river navigation, in hydrological monitoring, for irrigation assessment, for locust early warning detection, in health studies, for biodiversity preservation, for transportation, for land degradation and soil erosion forecast. The products shall be made available to Member States, to third countries, to UN institutions (FAO, WFP) and to public, research and private institutions. Under its systematic monitoring element, the global land component shall produce a wide range of biophysical variables worldwide, which describe the state of vegetation, the energy budget and the water cycle. Under its Hot Spot monitoring element, the global land component shall deliver, on request, detailed land information on specific areas of Union interest outside the Union territory to support Union environment or development or other policies. This information shall complement the systematic monitoring activity. The third element of the global land component shall be the production of Analysis Ready Data based on Sentinel satellite data. The pan-European component shall produce 5 high resolution thematic layers (HRL) describing the main land cover type characteristics: artificial surfaces, forest areas, agricultural areas (grasslands), wetness and small water bodies. The HRLs shall provide complementary information other land cover/land use nomenclatures, such as Corine Land Cover (CLC). The HRLs will be updated in a 3-year cycle. A set of new HRL products shall foresee the development of a HRL Small Woody Features and Phenology. The pan-European component shall maintain and update the Corine Land Cover (CLC) dataset in a 6 yearly cycle to the reference year 2012 and 2018. This shall include the production of land cover and land use change information. CLC shall be a key input dataset required for the calculation of the EEA Core Set of Indicators (CSI) and a baseline information source for ample thematic environmental reports. From 2018 onwards, a new generation CLC product shall be introduced in parallel, building upon the object based concept as elaborated by the Eionet Action Group on Land cover in Europe (EAGLE). The new Land Cover product shall address evolving user requirements as set forward by the Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) monitoring. The local component shall provide specific and more detailed land cover and land use information that is complementary to the information obtained through the Pan-European component. Its focus shall be on specific areas of interest or ‘hotspots’ which are prone to specific environmental challenges. Urban Atlas (UA) product shall include third dimension information over downtown areas. The UA shall fulfil requirements in support of the Union regional and urban policies, as well as for the elaboration of the series of reports on economic, social and territorial cohesion in the Union. The local component shall focus on the mapping and monitoring on a regular basis of environmental sensitive areas updating the riparian zones in view of action 5 of the Union Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. Support to and assessment of the Natura 2000 Community policy instrument shall be at the heart of monitoring changes in LC/LU in selected Natura 2000 sites, including potential surrounding threats from a land use perspective. Evolution of the local component shall provide for the development of coastal zone monitoring product (in collaboration with the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service). A snow and ice service shall explore economies of scale in cooperation with existing snow and ice services at Member State level. 3. SERVICE ARCHITECTURE The Land service shall be organized in the following two main components: The Global Land Component and the European Land Component. (1) The Global Land component shall include three elements. (a) Systematic Monitoring shall deliver systematically and in near real time bio-geophysical terrestrial variables which are of high priority for ensuring the support to EU policies. The activity shall produce a set of biophysical variables relevant for crop monitoring, crop production forecast, carbon budget, biodiversity, water availability and quality, snow and climate change monitoring at worldwide level, as well as additional biophysical variables relevant for environmental monitoring purposes at the global and continental scale. The Global Land component shall deliver mainly mid-resolution (300 m) products with nevertheless specific products at higher resolution, such as the 100 m resolution dynamic land-cover taking advantage of satellite capacities and Sentinel data availability. The Global Land systematic monitoring activity shall offer a complete Earth coverage compared to the targeted and precise coverage of the Pan-EU and local activities. The quality of the variables shall be constantly monitored and a specific attention shall be paid to the constitution of a consistent time series which are of crucial importance for many monitoring and early warning applications. (b) Hot Spot Monitoring shall provide detailed high and very high resolution land cover and thematic reference information on specific areas of interest for EU outside the European Union territory, particularly in the domain of the sustainable management of natural resources. The activity shall deal with the land cover and land cover change mapping of protected areas and key landscape areas in Africa, and for rural development in Asia. The activity shall support the forest monitoring including Reducing Emission from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) process. The list of areas of interest to be monitored and mapped is defined in collaboration with EU Services and EU Delegations following field activities currently carried out in this context and in partnership with relevant programs/institutions. Tailored land cover and land cover change maps will be produced on protected areas and their surroundings, to support biodiversity strategy and development activities, and on areas of interest for REDD+ process. (c) Analysis Ready Data (ARD): ARD will facilitate the uptake of Sentinel 2, supporting user communities such as Forest REDD+ and Agriculture, or environmental assessment with specific variables. The activity shall offer the whole archive of Sentinel 2 level 3 data. The provision of mosaic of Sentinel 1 data can be released on demand. (2) The European Land monitoring shall include two components. (a) Pan-European Land component: shall provide a portfolio of services, ranging from image mosaics, over land cover and land cover change mapping to mapping of complementary thematic land cover characteristics. A first set of tasks of the pan-European component shall address the post-processing of space data, and the production of pan-European mosaics of ortho-rectified images, and intermediate products such as biophysical variables. A second set of tasks shall update and improve the High Resolution Layers (HRLs) on LC characteristics. HRLs shall be updated in a 3-yearly cycle. As a third set of tasks, Corine Land Cover (CLC) time series will be further maintained and updated. CLC shall be a flagship product of the land monitoring service, and shall be updated every six years. (b) The Local Land component shall provide more detailed land cover and land use information complementary to the pan-European component on specific areas of interest, so called ‘hotspots’. The component shall cover and focus on the mapping and change analysis of larger urban areas following the Urban Atlas exercises of 2006 and 2012 (with now a 5 yearly update cycle). The local land component shall map and monitor environmental sensitive areas, updating the Riparian Zones work on a regular base. The Riparian Zones service shall provide crucial information for the monitoring and assessment of ecosystem functioning and biodiversity monitoring, as defined by the MAES framework. Land cover change products shall be also provided in this context. Furthermore similar work shall be done to monitor changes in Natura 2000 sites and potential surrounding threats from a land use perspective. The Coastal Zone monitoring shall address, in cooperation with the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service the specifics of the coastal strip as a hotspot of extreme complexity, gradients, dynamics, pressures and societal risks. 4. TECHNICAL SERVICE PORTFOLIO The Copernicus Global Land component, with the Systematic Monitoring element, shall provide a set of global biophysical variables describing systematically the state and the evolution of the vegetation and soils, the energy budget at the surface and the water cycle. The Vegetation product family shall include the following variables: (a) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI); (b) Leaf Area Index (LAI); (c) Fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FaPar); (d) Fraction of Vegetation Cover (Fcover); (e) Vegetation Condition Index (VCI); (f) Vegetation Productivity Index (VPI); (g) Greenness Evolution Index (GEI); (h) Dry Matter Productivity (DMP); (i) Phenology metrics (PHENO); (j) Evapotranspiration (ET); (k) Radiation fluxes; (l) Global Land Cover (GLC); (m) Burnt areas (BA). The Energy budget product family shall include: (a) Top of Canopy Reflectance(ToC-R); (b) Surface Albedo (SA); (c) Land Surface Temperature (LST). The Water product family shall include: (a) Surface Soil Moisture (SSM); (b) Soil water Index (SWI); (c) Water bodies (WB). The Cryosphere product family shall include: (a) Snow extent (SE); (b) Snow water equivalent (SWE). The Lake related product family shall include: (a) Lake ice coverage; (b) Lake surface water temperature; (c) Lake and river water level; (d) Lake surface reflectance; (e) Lake turbidity; (f) Lake trophic state. The Hot Spot related product family shall be based on high and very high resolution images, from approximately 1 to 30 meters spatial resolution, with a change assessment frequency between 1 to 20 years, acquired for areas of interest. The pan-European component shall produce satellite image mosaics, land cover/land use (LC/LU) information in the Corine Land Cover data, and the High Resolution Layers. (a) The High-Resolution and Very High Resolution Image Mosaics shall be seamless pan-European ortho-rectified raster mosaics based on satellite imagery covering 39 countries. (b) The Corine Land Cover shall be provided on a regular basis. The time-series shall also include a change layer, highlighting changes in land cover and land-use. (c) CLC+ shall provide the next generation CLC product, reducing the Minimum Mapping Unit to +/– 0,5 ha, and applying a data model built upon the EAGLE concept. (d) The high-resolution layers (HRL) shall be raster-based datasets which provide information about different land cover characteristics that is complementary to land-cover mapping datasets. HRLs shall provide some of the main land cover characteristics: impervious (sealed) surfaces; forest areas (tree cover, crown closure density and leaf type); grasslands; wetness and water bodies; small woody features. The local component shall provide specific and more detailed information that is complementary to the information obtained through the Pan-European component. The local component shall focus on different types of hotspots, i.e. areas that are prone to specific environmental challenges and problems. It shall be based on very high resolution imagery (2,5 × 2,5 m pixels) in combination with other available datasets (high and medium resolution images) covering the pan-European area. Local component products shall comprise: (a) Urban Atlas shall provide pan-European comparable land use and land cover data (including the third dimension) covering a number of Functional Urban Areas (FUA). (b) Riparian Zones shall address land cover and land use in areas along rivers. (c) The Natura 2000 (N2K) sites. 5. DATA NEEDS 5.1. Satellites-Based Observation The satellite data necessary for product development shall be provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the context of the Copernicus satellite image Data Ware House (DWH). The following list of data sensors shall be considered: High resolution and very high resolution optical sensors in the Visible near infrared (VNIR) domain, complemented with High Resolution SAR sensors and Medium Resolution optical sensors in the Short wave infrared (SWIR) domain. The Global Land systematic monitoring of the Earth shall be based on spectro-radiometer, microwave radiometer, altimeter and synthetic aperture radar satellite data spatial and temporal composites. Polar Orbiting and Geostationary satellites shall be used in the production and shall deliver their data in near real time in order to provide the variables to the users, less than three days after each 10 days period. To ensure the continuity of the observations and the availability of long time series, several sensors shall be combined Inter-calibrated data shall be requested. The land cover and land use mapping elements of the Local, Pan-European and Global components shall be based on High Resolution and Very High Resolution spectro-radiometer and synthetic aperture radar satellite data. Historical data shall be also required for change analysis. The Pan-European mapping shall be based on a complete multi-temporal EU39 coverage. Sentinel 1 and 2 shall be operationally integrated in the process. They shall be complemented with VHR resolution satellite data for specific applications and for validation purposes. 5.2. In-Situ Observations Copernicus land services shall use in situ data for calibration and validation activities.