03 – European / international land-cover, land-use and habitat classifications

Research stream 3 for the standards conformance of Urban Landscape Graphics (house style "UrbanSens – Ecological Vector Style"). Research date: 2026-09-30. Scope: CORINE Land Cover, Urban Atlas, CLC+ Backbone, Nature Restoration Regulation, EUNIS, MAES / EU ecosystem typology, INSPIRE (LC, LU/HILUCS, HB), LUCAS, EAGLE, Local Climate Zones, ESA WorldCover, and the crosswalks between them.

0. How to read this file#

0.1 Evidence marks#

Colour values carry V only if I saw the numbers in an official legend, style file, service renderer or specification. Hex values are my own conversion of verified RGB triples.

0.2 Method notes#

• Primary sources were read as raw text through a browser (not through a summarising model) wherever possible; legend tables that exist only as images were opened and read visually.
• Official colours for CLC and Urban Atlas were taken from the renderer definitions of the EEA's own ArcGIS map services (JSON drawingInfo), which carry numeric RGBA values per class code; the Urban Atlas 2021 legend from the SLD returned by GetStyles of the CLMS web map service. Where a service offers only legend swatch images (EEA ecosystem-type map, section 5.6), the centre pixel of each swatch was sampled and the value is marked V*.
• All RGB/hex pairs in this file were checked by script for internal consistency, and the CLC and Urban Atlas tables were compared by script against the saved service responses (44 of 44 and 27 of 27 classes identical).
• The web-search budget of the session was exhausted part-way through; remaining gaps were closed by opening known primary URLs directly. Items that could not be verified are listed in section 12 (Open points).
• Class names, codes and RGB triples are nomenclature facts and are reproduced exactly. Definitions from product manuals are paraphrased. Legal definitions of Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 are quoted verbatim with article numbers, as requested.

0.3 Version status on 2026-09-30#

1. CORINE Land Cover (CLC)#

Product facts (V): pan-European inventory with 44 thematic classes in three levels; minimum mapping unit 25 ha, minimum mapping width 100 m; change layers with 5 ha MMU; vector and 100 m raster. Source: https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/corine-land-cover. With a 25 ha MMU, CLC is a context dataset for cities, it does not resolve single parks, street trees or squares.

Official legend (V): RGB values below are the fill colours of the unique-value renderer (field Code_18) of the EEA map service Corine/CLC2018_WM, layer 0 "Corine Land Cover 2018 vector". They are identical in all sub-layers of that service. Source: https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/Corine/CLC2018_WM/MapServer/layers?f=pjson. Class labels are taken from the same renderer. (The Copernicus nomenclature guideline at https://land.copernicus.eu/content/corine-land-cover-nomenclature-guidelines/html/ spells a few names slightly differently: "Natural grassland", "Bare rock", "Peatbogs", "Transitional woodland/shrub", S.)

Column "City": U = typical inside settlements; P = typical in the peri-urban fringe of Central European cities; – = rarely relevant there (A = author's assessment).

Convention notes (A): artificial surfaces are reds, magentas and pinks (including the vegetated artificial classes 141/142, which are pink, not green); agriculture is yellow to orange; forests saturated greens; grass/heath yellow-greens; open ground greys; wetlands blue-violets; water cyan to pale blue.

2. Copernicus Urban Atlas (UA) and Street Tree Layer (STL)#

2.1 Product facts (V)#

Sources: UA 2021 PUM https://library.land.copernicus.eu/products/Urban_Atlas_CLMS_UA2021_LULC_PUM_v1.html; UA 2012/2018 PUM (mapping guide v6.3) https://library.land.copernicus.eu/products/Urban_Atlas_Land_Cover-Land_Use_and_Street_Tree_Layer_2012_and_2018_PUM_v6.html

• Vector LC/LU maps per Functional Urban Area (FUA): ~300 cities for 2006; 788 FUAs for 2012 and 2018; 790 FUAs for 2021. Coverage EEA-38 (without Liechtenstein) + UK.
• Mapping scale 1:10 000; MMU 0.25 ha for urban classes (class 1) and 1 ha for rural classes (2–5); minimum mapping width 10 m (6 m for class 12220). Change layer MMU 0.1 ha / 0.25 ha.
• Thematic accuracy targets: ≥ 85 % urban classes, ≥ 80 % rural classes and overall.
• Delivery: GeoPackage (2018, 2021) with "layer styles in qml format" according to the manual; the UA 2021 download page offers FlatGeobuf files per FUA (V, https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/urban-atlas/urban-atlas-2021); attribute fields code_2018 / code_2021 (5-character string) and class_2018 / class_2021.
• The nomenclature is "derived from CORINE Land Cover": four hierarchical levels for artificial surfaces, two for the rest. The five-digit code encodes the levels (11210 = 1.1.2.1).
• Urban fabric classes are separated only by degree of soil sealing (from the HRL Imperviousness layer), not by building type.
• New in 2021: Green urban areas are split by accessibility (14110 public, 14120 private, 14130 unknown), derived with OpenStreetMap and commercial road data.

2.2 Nomenclature with official legend colours#

Codes and names: V from the PUM nomenclature tables. RGB: V for the 2018 legend, read from the renderer (field code_2018) of the EEA map service UrbanAtlas/UA_UrbanAtlas_2018, layer 2 "Land Use vector": https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/UrbanAtlas/UA_UrbanAtlas_2018/MapServer/layers?f=pjson

The 2021 legend was read (V) from the SLD that the CLMS web map service returns for GetStyles on the layers UA_LCU_2021_VECTOR and UA_LCU_2018_VECTOR: https://mapserver.dataspace.copernicus.eu/ogc?service=WMS&request=GetCapabilities&version=1.3.0, all classes that exist in both years have exactly the 2018 colours; the 2021 style adds the three access classes and the two no-data classes. The product page counts 19 urban classes (MMU 0.25 ha) and 9 rural classes (MMU 1 ha) for 2021.

Convention notes (A): UA keeps the CLC colours where classes coincide (12100, 12300, 12400, 21000, 22000, 23000, 24000, 32000, 33000, 40000, 50000) but departs for the urban detail: urban fabric is a five-step dark-red-to-pale-pink ramp by sealing degree, transport is grey (three greys), and green urban areas are a strong yellow-green (not CLC's pink). In 2021 the access split is drawn as three steps of the same green: public = the familiar bright green, private = darker, unknown = darkest.

2.3 Class content that matters for the element catalog (V, paraphrased from the PUM annex)#

2.4 Street Tree Layer (V)#

Source: section 4.2.9 of the 2012/2018 PUM and section 7.2.5 of the 2021 PUM (URLs above). Colours: https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/UrbanAtlas/UA_StreetTreeLayer_2018/MapServer/layers?f=pjson and the CLMS WMS named in section 2.2.

3. CLC+ Backbone (raster, 10 m)#

Sources: PUM 2023 https://library.land.copernicus.eu/products/CLCplus_Backbone_2023_PUM_v1.html; PUM 2021 https://library.land.copernicus.eu/products/CLCplus_Backbone_2021_PUM_v1.html

3.1 Product facts (V)#

• 10 m pixel-based raster, 11 land-cover classes, no MMU (each pixel gets the dominant land cover); 8-bit unsigned; ETRS89-LAEA (EPSG:3035).
• Reference years 2018 (Sentinel-2 window ± 6 months), 2021 and 2023 (reference year ± 3 months; for 2023: 1 Oct 2022 – 31 Mar 2024). UK missing in 2021. Biennial from 2023.
• 2023 delivered as cloud-optimised GeoTIFF tiles (897 tiles of 100 × 100 km) with embedded colour map, plus symbology files .lyr, .qml, .sld; 2018/2021 delivered with .clr colour tables.
• Target accuracy: 90 % overall, max. 15 % omission/commission per class (lower regionally for "Low-growing woody plants" and "Lichens and mosses").
• Class logic is pure land cover following the EAGLE land-cover components; mixed pixels are resolved with a decision tree (water > 50 %? biotic > 50 %? woody > 50 %? …; biotic cover below 30 % leads to class 9).

3.2 Classes, EAGLE link and official colours#

Codes and names: V (technical specification tables of both manuals). RGB: V: read from the colour-palette tables printed (as images) in the annexes of the 2021 and the 2023 manuals; both years are identical. EAGLE references: V (section 6.1.2 of the 2023 manual).

3.3 Class definitions that decide where library elements fall (V, paraphrased)#

4. Nature Restoration Regulation (EU) 2024/1991: urban ecosystems#

Primary source (all quotes V): Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 June 2024 on nature restoration and amending Regulation (EU) 2022/869, OJ L, 2024/1991, 29.7.2024, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202401991 (ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1991/oj).

4.1 Definitions in Article 3 (verbatim)#

4.2 Article 8 "Restoration of urban ecosystems" (verbatim) and related provisions#

Key distinction (V): the no-net-loss target of Art. 8(1) and the green-space trend of Art. 8(2) are assessed on the total national area; the tree-canopy trend of Art. 8(3) is assessed in each urban ecosystem area.

4.3 Which data and classes measure the targets#

Source (V): "Methodological support on datasets to be used under Article 8 of the Nature Restoration Regulation", informal discussion document of DG Environment with EEA logo, document version 2.0, portal date 07/07/2026, https://biodiversity.europa.eu/europes-biodiversity/nature-restoration/reference-portal-for-nature-restoration-regulation/documentation/nrp-urban-explantory-notes-v2_07072026.pdf/@@display-file/file (linked from the NRR Reference Portal, https://biodiversity.europa.eu/europes-biodiversity/nature-restoration/reference-portal-for-nature-restoration-regulation). The document states that it is not legally binding.

CLCplus Backbone classes counted as urban green space (V): trees = classes 2, 3 and 4; bushes, shrubs = class 5; permanent herbaceous vegetation = class 6; lichens and mosses = class 8; ponds and watercourses = class 10. The note recommends reclassifying these to 1 and everything else to no-data. Consequently not counted: 1 Sealed, 7 Periodically herbaceous, 9 Non and sparsely vegetated, 11 Snow and ice, 253 coastal seawater.

Urban tree canopy cover (V): the HRL Tree Cover Density layer gives a tree-cover percentage per 10 m pixel; the canopy area is obtained by summing the percentages over the urban ecosystem area. It has to be reported per urban ecosystem area. The CLMS product family "High Resolution Layer Tree Cover and Forests" consists of Tree Cover Density (0–100 % per pixel), Dominant Leaf Type (broadleaved / coniferous) and Forest Type; only Forest Type applies the FAO forest definition and filters out street trees, orchards and patches below half a hectare, Tree Cover Density therefore includes street trees and orchard trees (V, https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/high-resolution-layer-tree-cover-density).

Thresholds used in the note (V): urban centre = contiguous 1 km² cells with at least 1,500 inhabitants/km² and at least 50,000 inhabitants in total; urban cluster = contiguous cells with at least 300 inhabitants/km² and at least 5,000 inhabitants. Peri-urban area: no obligation to delineate; if included, at least 1 km around centres and clusters, clipped to the LAU.

Supplementary data (V): allowed to improve or complement the official datasets if temporally consistent (2024 baseline, 2030, later), spatially consistent and documented; bottom-up inventories are named as the way to capture features "such as green roofs that won't be captured by the official data".

Consequences for a style library (A):

1. The legal notion of "urban green space" is a land-cover mask, independent of ownership, use or quality: a lawn, a hedge, a pond and a wood all count; arable plots (class 7), bare ground, water-bound and permeable paving (class 9) and green roofs (mapped as class 1) do not count in the Copernicus baseline.
2. Tree canopy is a separate, overlapping measure (a canopy over asphalt counts as canopy), so trees need to exist as an overlay element in addition to ground-surface elements.

4.4 Related: ecosystem-accounting indicator for settlements (V)#

Regulation (EU) 2024/3024, Annex IX, Section 3(3)(a): condition accounts for "settlements and other artificial areas" report green areas in cities and adjacent towns and suburbs in % of total area, and the PM2.5 concentration in cities. Cities, towns and suburbs are LAUs categorised by degree of urbanisation (Regulation (EU) 2017/2391). Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202403024

5. EUNIS habitat classification#

5.1 Status and where it lives now (V)#

• The former EUNIS web application is retired; the classification trees are served by BISE: https://biodiversity.europa.eu/resources/search-habitat
• Revised classification ("EUNIS habitat types hierarchical view 2021/2022"): https://biodiversity.europa.eu/resources/search-habitat/eunis-habitat-types-hierarchical-view-2021-2022
• EUNIS 2012 (includes the groups not yet revised): https://biodiversity.europa.eu/resources/search-habitat/eunis-habitat-types-hierarchical-view-2012
• EEA SDI series "EUNIS habitat classification and crosswalks (tabular data)": the review covers marine habitats, coastal habitats, grasslands, heathland, forest, sparsely vegetated, vegetated man-made habitats and wetlands; the remaining groups (inland waters and complex habitats) are to be revised later; the 2012 version "includes the not yet revised groups". https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/srv/api/records/638330ea-90e6-4e41-81ea-e70f25ae7117
• Constructed habitats (2012 group J) do not appear in the revised tree at all and are not named among the pending groups in the current metadata (an older EEA text listed them as pending, S). For buildings, roads, artificial waters and waste deposits the 2012 J codes remain the only EUNIS codes (A).

Code syntax differs between generations: 2012 uses a dot after the second character (E2.6, E2.64); the 2021/2022 revision has no dot (V31, R22). Both generations must be stored in separate fields.

5.2 Revised classification 2021/2022: level 1 (V)#

5.3 Revised group V "Vegetated man-made habitats": complete (V)#

Source: BISE tree (URL above). The name of V31 is truncated in BISE after the first comma; the full name is taken from FloraVeg.EU (S): https://floraveg.eu/habitat/overview/V3

5.4 Revised groups R, S, T, Q, U, N: level 2 complete, level 3 selected for temperate urban / peri-urban use (V)#

All codes and names V from the BISE tree; the selection of level-3 codes is mine (A). Mediterranean, Macaronesian, alpine and boreal level-3 units are omitted here.

Observations (A): the revised group U lists at level 3 only fjell fields, polar desert and moraines under U5, the 2012 units for bare clay, sand and gravel (H5.3x), burnt areas (H5.5) and trampled areas (H5.6) have no visible level-3 successor in the BISE tree; the official crosswalk table should be consulted before assigning 2021 codes to bare urban ground. Group T4 keeps "Lines of trees" in its title, but planted tree lines are V63.

5.5 EUNIS 2012: codes still in wide use for urban greens and constructed habitats (V)#

Source: BISE EUNIS 2012 tree (URL above). "→ 2021" gives the revised code with the same or near-identical name (A, name-based; not taken from the official crosswalk).

2012 level 1 for reference (V): A Marine habitats · B Coastal habitats · C Inland surface waters · D Mires, bogs and fens · E Grasslands and lands dominated by forbs, mosses or lichens · F Heathland, scrub and tundra · G Woodland, forest and other wooded land · H Inland unvegetated or sparsely vegetated habitats · I Regularly or recently cultivated agricultural, horticultural and domestic habitats · J Constructed, industrial and other artificial habitats · X Habitat complexes.

5.6 Official legend colours for EUNIS#

The classification itself (BISE trees, EEA tables) defines no colours. An official map legend does exist for EUNIS 2012 level 1 and level 2: the EEA dataset "Ecosystem types of Europe" (terrestrial part, version 3.1, reference year 2012, 100 m, derived from CORINE Land Cover and further layers) is published as the map service Ecosystem/EcosystemTypeMap_v3_1_Terrestrial with one legend entry per class: https://bio.discomap.eea.europa.eu/arcgis/rest/services/Ecosystem/EcosystemTypeMap_v3_1_Terrestrial/MapServer/legend?f=pjson

V* = the service delivers its legend as swatch images, not as numbers; the RGB values below were sampled from the centre pixel of each official swatch. The older service MAES/MAES_ecosystem_type_maps_WM (map version 2.1) returns identical colours for the classes compared (groups B to E). Limits: the legend covers only classes present in the map (no E5, FA, X …), only the 2012 codes, and it is not collision-free (D5 = F6, D6 = F7). Many values are re-used CLC colours (C1, C2, E2, E3, G1, G3, G4, I1, J3, J6 …).

Level 1 (service layer 1):

Level 2 (service layer 0, 45 classes):

No legend exists for the revised 2021/2022 codes or for level 3 and below. The INSPIRE default style for habitats is a uniform grey (section 7.3).

6. EU ecosystem typologies#

6.1 MAES typology (2013) (V)#

Source: BISE "Typology of ecosystems" https://biodiversity.europa.eu/europes-biodiversity/ecosystems/typology-of-ecosystems (table from the first MAES report, Maes et al. 2013).

The BISE table itself notes that CLC is too coarse for the Urban type and "needs to be complemented e.g. by Urban atlas … and HRL Imperviousness".

6.2 CLC → MAES level 2 (official correspondence, V)#

Source: https://biodiversity.europa.eu/europes-biodiversity/ecosystems/correspondence-between-corine-land-cover-classes-and-ecosystem-types

6.3 Ecosystem types of Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3024: level 1 (V)#

Source: Annex IX "Module for ecosystem accounts", Section 3, point 5, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202403024. First reference year 2024; extent and condition accounts every 3 years; transmission within 24 months; extent reported in thousand hectares.

6.4 EU ecosystem typology (EUET), levels 2 and 3 (V)#

Source: Eurostat, "EU ecosystem typology – Technical Note", version July 2026 (URL in section 0.3). Level 1 is legally fixed (above); level 2 is in the questionnaire for voluntary reporting and "aligns, where feasible, with Corine Land Cover"; level 3 is "inspired by EUNIS". Names were extracted from the PDF text layer (multi-line cells re-joined by script; terrestrial names checked against the raw text).

Type 1 "Settlements and other artificial areas", complete (V)

Other types, level 2 complete, level 3 for the types that occur in and around cities (V)

6.5 General ecosystem typology for National Restoration Plans (V)#

Source: DG Environment "Technical background note" (rev. 02-10-25), "Use of a general ecosystem typology as part of the National Restoration Plan", https://biodiversity.europa.eu/europes-biodiversity/nature-restoration/reference-portal-for-nature-restoration-regulation/documentation/technical-background-note-typology-of-ecosystems.pdf (informal, non-binding).

The note's guidance definition of urban ecosystems: settlements and other artificial areas strongly modified by people and characterised by buildings, other man-made structures and vegetation or aquatic elements created or modified by human intervention, including residential, industrial, commercial and transport areas, mining sites, urban green areas, parks and small ponds (paraphrase).

7. INSPIRE#

7.1 Land Cover theme (Annex II) (V)#

Source: D2.8.II.2 Data Specification on Land Cover – Technical Guidelines, v3.1.0 (2024-01-31): https://inspire-mif.github.io/technical-guidelines/data/lc/dataspecification_lc.html

• INSPIRE prescribes no land-cover nomenclature. The code list LandCoverClassValue is empty and extensible with any values (registry: https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/LandCoverClassValue).
• Default portrayal carries no thematic colours: LC.LandCoverPoints.Default = 3-pixel circle, black fill and outline (#000000); LC.LandCoverSurfaces.Default = white fill (#FFFFFF), black outline (#000000) of 3 pixels; LC.LandCoverRaster.Default = opaque raster. The guideline recommends filling polygons with the colour of the nomenclature's own legend (its example is CORINE Land Cover).
• Pure Land Cover Components (PLCC): Annex H, informative, developed with the EAGLE group; not mandatory. The annex provides a colour map; the values below were read from the table image in the guideline (V).

PLCC content notes (V, paraphrased): 001 covers all sealed man-made constructions (buildings, other constructions, linear networks) and excludes parks and gardens; 002 is solid rock including quarries; 003 is loose natural material (boulders to clay) and unvegetated fallow land; 008 includes dwarf shrubs; 009 is all grass and forb vegetation except arable crops; 011 and 012 describe growing conditions and are meant to be combined with a vegetation component; components may be combined with percentages (e.g. mixed forest = 006 + 007). LUCAS 2022 reproduces these 18 components as Annex 9.11 of its surveyor instructions (V): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/205002/13686460/C1-Annex-9.11-LUCAS-2022.pdf

7.2 Land Use theme (Annex III): HILUCS (V)#

Sources: INSPIRE registry code list HILUCSValue (98 values, all "Valid", governance level "Legal (EU)") https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/HILUCSValue; portrayal from D2.8.III.4 Data Specification on Land Use – Technical Guidelines (published 2024-07-31) https://inspire-mif.github.io/technical-guidelines/data/lu/dataspecification_lu.html

HILUCS levels 1 and 2 (complete) with level 3 (complete list of registry values):

INSPIRE default portrayal for Land Use (V, colour tables are images in section 11.2 of the guideline): style LandUse.ExistingLandUse.Default (and the identical LandUse.ZoningElement.Default): objects filled by HILUCS level 1, boundaries black, 2 pixels. Data providers may apply the limited level-2 "adjustments" listed second.

Other LU styles: LandUse.SpatialPlan.Default = plan extent as black line, 2 pixels; LandUse.SupplementaryRegulation.Default = coloured 2-pixel line by regulation type. The SLD files are distributed separately from the guideline (not inspected).

7.3 Habitats and Biotopes theme (Annex III) (V)#

Source: D2.8.III.18 v4.0.0 (2024-01-31) https://inspire-mif.github.io/technical-guidelines/data/hb/dataspecification_hb.html; registry https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/ReferenceHabitatTypeSchemeValue

• Reference habitat type schemes (ReferenceHabitatTypeSchemeValue, not extensible): eunis (EUNIS habitat classification), habitatsDirective (Annex I to Directive 92/43/EEC), marineStrategyFrameworkDirective (Table 1 of Annex III to Directive 2008/56/EC).
• Code lists: EunisHabitatTypeCodeValue (values as published by the EEA; the registry lists none itself), HabitatsDirectiveCodeValue, MarineStrategyFrameworkDirectiveCodeValue, LocalNameCodeValue with QualifierLocalNameValue for the relation between a local type and the pan-European reference type, five values (V, https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/QualifierLocalNameValue): congruent (conceptually the same), includedIn (the local type is a subtype of the pan-European type), includes (the pan-European type is a subtype of the local type), overlaps (partial overlap, none of the other relations holds), excludes.
• Layers: HB.Habitat, HB.HabitatDistribution. Default style HB.Habitat.Default: points as 6-pixel squares and surfaces filled 50 % grey with black 1-pixel outline; the guideline gives the grey as "#808080" in the SLD abstract and as "RGB 80,80,80" in the prose (internally inconsistent). No per-habitat colours are prescribed; a layer per habitat type is recommended.

Conclusion (V): among the three INSPIRE themes only Land Use prescribes thematic default colours (six HILUCS level-1 colours); Land Cover offers an informative PLCC colour map; Habitats and Biotopes prescribes a uniform grey.

8. LUCAS and EAGLE#

8.1 LUCAS land cover (Eurostat) (V)#

Source: LUCAS 2022 Technical reference document C3 "Classification (Land cover & Land use)" https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/205002/13686460/C3-LUCAS-2022.pdf (linked from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lucas/database/2022). LUCAS is an in-situ point survey (2 km grid, about 1 million points; a sample is visited), a nomenclature and validation source, not a map product. No official legend colours were found for LUCAS (not verified either way → open point).

LUCAS land-use codes (separate axis, V): U110 Agriculture (U111, U112 Fallow land, U113 Kitchen garden) · U120 Forestry · U130 Aquaculture and fishing · U140 Mining and quarrying · U150 Other primary production · U210 Energy production · U220 Industry and manufacturing (U221–U228) · U310 Transport, communication networks, storage, protection works (U311 Railway, U312 Road, U313 Water, U314 Air transport, U315 pipelines, U316 Telecommunication, U317 Logistics and storage, U318 Protection infrastructures, U319 Electricity, gas and thermal power distribution) · U320 Water and waste treatment (U321, U322) · U330 Construction · U340 Commerce, financial, professional and information services (U341, U342) · U350 Community services · U360 Recreation, leisure, sport (U361 Amenities, museums, leisure; U362 Sport) · U370 Residential · U410 Abandoned areas (U411–U415) · U420 Semi-natural and natural areas not in use.

Useful LUCAS principle (V): land cover and land use are coded on two independent axes, and the manual lists the admissible combinations (e.g. E20 + U362 = sports turf; A21 + U370 = residential yard). This is the same cover/use separation as EAGLE and INSPIRE (PLCC + HILUCS).

8.2 EAGLE concept (V)#

Sources: https://land.copernicus.eu/en/eagle (tabs "Introduction and context" and "Technical implementation"; matrix figure https://land.copernicus.eu/en/eagle/eagle-matrix-1-2.jpg/@@images/image/huge) and the CLC+ Backbone 2023 manual.

• EAGLE is the Eionet Action Group on Land monitoring in Europe (active since 2008). It is not another nomenclature but a semantic tool for characterising land units and for translating between nomenclatures. EAGLE compliance is required of new CLMS products and the concept is a central component of CLCplus.
• The EAGLE matrix has three blocks: Land Cover Components (LCC), subdivided into Abiotic, Biotic and Water; Land Use Attributes (LUA); Land Characteristics (LCH) (management type, spatial pattern, (bio-)physical characteristics, ecosystem types, status …). Elements are hierarchical, down to six levels.
• In the UML data model a Land Unit is composed of one or several LCCs, can be enriched by LUAs, and each LCC or the whole unit can be described further by LCHs.
• Design criteria named on the page: clear separation of land cover and land use plus further characteristics; object-oriented description instead of classification; inclusion of seasonal phenomena; scale independence.

Land Cover Components, upper levels as drawn in the official matrix figure (V):

The CLC+ manual additionally cites LCC 1.1.1.3 (the node from which railway tracks deviate, by position "Open Sealed", A) and the Land Characteristics LCH 3.1.1, 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 for needle-leaved, evergreen and deciduous trees (codes V, meanings inferred from the class definitions, A).

Why this matters for the catalog (A): the library's surface elements are EAGLE land-cover components in all but name, sealed (asphalt, concrete, paving), non-sealed artificial (gravel, water-bound surfaces), unconsolidated natural (soil, sand), woody (trees, bushes), herbaceous (grass-like, forbs), water. Tagging each element with its LCC node gives a single pivot from which CLC+ Backbone, INSPIRE PLCC and LUCAS codes follow.

9. Local Climate Zones and ESA WorldCover#

9.1 Local Climate Zones (LCZ)#

Typology: Stewart, I. D. & Oke, T. R. (2012), "Local Climate Zones for Urban Temperature Studies", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 93(12), 1879–1900, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00019.1 (the paper itself was not opened; class names below are those of the WUDAPT data product). 17 classes: 10 built types and 7 land-cover types.

Two colour tables are in circulation and they differ slightly:

• Palette A, the "official hex color" of the global LCZ map (V). Listed in the readme.txt (updated 2023-10-08) of Demuzere et al., "Global map of Local Climate Zones", Zenodo, version 3.0.0, and embedded in the GeoTIFF lcz_filter_v3.tif: https://zenodo.org/records/8419340 (described in Demuzere et al. 2022, Earth Syst. Sci. Data 14, 3835–3873, doi:10.5194/essd-14-3835-2022).
• Palette B, class table of the Earth Engine Data Catalog for the same dataset (producer: Bochum Urban Climate Lab) (S, a catalogue page, numbers seen): https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/RUB_RUBCLIM_LCZ_global_lcz_map_latest. This is the palette commonly quoted as "the WUDAPT colours". Which of the two the LCZ Generator and older WUDAPT level-0 maps use was not checked.

Notes:

• Raster value coding 1–17 (A–G = 11–17) is the convention of the global map (V). RGB triples are my conversion of the readme's hex values.
• The dataset authors themselves advise combining the ten built classes with another land-cover product where a wider range of natural classes is needed (V, Zenodo description), for this library that means: LCZ 1–10 style urban structure, the library's own elements style the land cover.
• Convention (A): compact built types run dark red → red, open built types brown-orange → light orange, lightweight yellow, large low-rise light grey, heavy industry dark grey, trees two greens, scrub olive, low plants light green, paved black, bare soil pale yellow, water blue-violet.
• The Urban Atlas 2021 manual cites France's national LCZ map (Cerema), built on Urban Atlas areas, as a use case (V).

9.2 ESA WorldCover (V)#

Source: ESA WorldCover Product User Manual, document WorldCover_PUM_v2.0, version 2.0, last modified 2022-10-24, Table 3 "Coding of the Map layer and definition of the classes": https://esa-worldcover.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/v200/2021/docs/WorldCover_PUM_V2.0.pdf. The hex values (my conversion) agree with the class table of the Earth Engine Data Catalog entry ESA/WorldCover/v200 (S): https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/ESA_WorldCover_v200

Product facts (V; the Sentinel-1/Sentinel-2 basis and the version labels v100/v200 are taken from the catalogue entry, S): 10 m global land cover from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2; map for 2020 (v100) and 2021 (v200); 11 classes defined with the UN FAO Land Cover Classification System (LCCS); cloud-optimised GeoTIFF, one byte per pixel.

Convention (A): built-up red; trees dark green; shrubland orange; grassland yellow; cropland pink-violet; bare grey; water strong blue; wetland teal. Compared with the Copernicus legends only "red = built-up", "dark green = trees", "grey = bare" and "blue = water" carry over.

10. Crosswalks: what exists and where#

11. Official portrayal: availability per scheme#

Hue conventions shared across the European schemes (A, derived from the verified values):

12. Open points (not verified)#

13. Implications for the element catalog#

13.1 Mapping of the 16 existing elements to the European schemes#

All codes are verified codes from the sections above; the assignment of a library element to a code is my proposal (A). "NRR UGS" = counts as urban green space under the Copernicus baseline (CLC+ Backbone classes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10).

Reading of the table (A):

• The European schemes distinguish sealed vs. non-sealed, woody vs. herbaceous, permanent vs. periodic and tree leaf type: they do not distinguish paving materials. Asphalt, concrete, light and dark paving and decking all collapse into one class (CLC+ 1, PLCC 001, LUCAS A2x). Material stays a house-level attribute.
• Lawn, meadow and wildflower meadow also collapse into one land-cover class (CLC+ 6, PLCC 009, LUCAS E20). Only EUNIS separates them (V31 vs. R22/R21 vs. R1x/V38/V39), EUNIS is therefore the scheme that justifies the library's fine vegetation split.
• Reed sits in an awkward position: land-cover products put it into "permanent herbaceous" (or water), land-use/habitat schemes into wetlands. The element needs both codes.

Global / climate schemes (assignments A; LCZ land-cover semantics not re-read in the 2012 paper):

13.2 Elements the European schemes require that the 16-class sheet lacks#

13.3 Attributes every element should carry#

13.4 Themes the library can ship from verified values#

1. House theme (mellow pastel), keep the shared conventions of section 11: light yellow-green for herbaceous, darker greens for woody (conifer darkest), pale yellow for arable, blue-cyan for water, blue-violet or turquoise for wetlands. Be aware that the house greys for asphalt/concrete/paving read as "bare / non-vegetated" or "roads" in European land-cover legends, where red means sealed; for city-scale landscape plans grey hardscape is fine, but a toggle to a red-family "sealed" rendering is needed for sealing and land-cover maps.
2. Official CLC theme (44 colours, section 1).
3. Official Urban Atlas theme (section 2.2: 2018 and 2021 legends with the three access greens; Street Tree Layer greens in section 2.4).
4. Official CLC+ Backbone theme (section 3.2) including an NRR mask variant (classes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 vs. the rest).
5. INSPIRE themes: HILUCS level-1 land-use colours (section 7.2) and the informative PLCC colour map (section 7.1).
6. LCZ theme (palette A of section 9.1, palette B as an alias) and WorldCover theme (section 9.2).
7. EEA ecosystem-map theme for EUNIS 2012 level 2 (section 5.6), possible, but coarse; note that it draws I2 "gardens and parks" pure yellow and J1 buildings pure red. For the revised EUNIS codes, MAES / EU ecosystem typology and LUCAS no official theme exists; these are semantic crosswalks only and are rendered with the house theme.