Delivering UK & Ireland LUCAS

Land cover and land use are of increasing importance in the definition and evaluation of many EU common policies (especially the integration of environment or sustainable development into agricultural, regional or transport policies). Land cover identifies the crop grown or ground cover where land use relates to the function or destination of the output.

Environment Systems will collect statistical information of land cover, land use and selected agri-environmental issues through field visits on a sample of circa 18,500 sites around the UK and Ireland during the middle of 2009.  This is part of a wider survey of 200,000 – 235,000 points in 23 EU countries. The collected information will be used by Eurostat for statistics provision.  The data will be used for land use and land cover evaluation (in co-operation with DG Environment, the Joint Research Centre and the European Environment Agency), for assessing agri-environmental issues (in co-operation with DG Environment and DG Agriculture), crop statistics (DG Agriculture), and for various in-situ data collection activities (within the GMES – Global Monitoring for Environment and Security in co-operation with DG Enterprise) and in other related activities.

Project Manager, Graeme Summers says “This project is an exciting opportunity for us as it builds on the previous LUCAS work we completed for Eurostat in 2006.  It will also compliment our other survey and mapping activities, in particular our satellite and airborne mapping that we now deliver around the UK and Ireland.”