This European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) dataset provides the maps of Topsoil Soil Organic Carbon in EU-25 (reference year 2014) that are based on LUCAS 2009 soil point data through a generalized additive model. The data provided have been prepared for use by the Land Resource Management Unit (Institute for Environment & Sustainability) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. This metadata refers to two maps: a) Map of predicted topsoil organic carbon content (g C kg-1) : The map was produced by fitting a generalised additive model between organic carbon measurements from the LUCAS survey (dependent variable) and a set of selected environmental covariates; namely slope, land cover, annual accumulated temperature, net primary productivity, latitude and longitude. The format provided is GeoTIFF. b) Map of standard error of the OC model predictions (g C kg-1): This map presents the associated uncertainty to the organic carbon content predictions. The standard error, which shows the theoretical range of deviation in the prediction made by the generalized additive model, was calculated for every pixel of the Map of predicted topsoil organic carbon content, based on the posterior covariance matrix of the fitted parameters. The format provided is GeoTIFF. The map of predicted OC content had the smallest values in Mediterranean countries and in croplands across Europe, whereas largest OC contents were predicted in wetlands, woodlands and mountainous areas. The map of the predictions' standard error had large uncertainty in northern latitudes, wetlands, moors and heathlands, whereas small uncertainty was mostly found in croplands. The map produced gives the most updated general picture of topsoil OC content at the European Union scale. IMPORTANT NOTE: this metadata is only for internal EEA use. The original metadata of this dataset prepared by ESDAC can be found here: https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/topsoil-soil-organic-carbon-lucas-eu25. For any problem / question / comment on this dataset, please contact ec-esdac@ec.europa.eu. About ESDAC: a) Panagos P., Van Liedekerke M., Jones A., Montanarella L., “European Soil Data Centre: Response to European policy support and public data requirements”; (2012) Land Use Policy, 29 (2), pp. 329-338. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.07.003 b) European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, European Commission, Joint Research Centre

Corine Land Cover 2018 (CLC2018) is one of the Corine Land Cover (CLC) datasets produced within the frame the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service referring to land cover / land use status of year 2018. CLC service has a long-time heritage (formerly known as "CORINE Land Cover Programme"), coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA). It provides consistent and thematically detailed information on land cover and land cover changes across Europe. CLC datasets are based on the classification of satellite images produced by the national teams of the participating countries - the EEA members and cooperating countries (EEA39). National CLC inventories are then further integrated into a seamless land cover map of Europe. The resulting European database relies on standard methodology and nomenclature with following base parameters: 44 classes in the hierarchical 3-level CLC nomenclature; minimum mapping unit (MMU) for status layers is 25 hectares; minimum width of linear elements is 100 metres. Change layers have higher resolution, i.e. minimum mapping unit (MMU) is 5 hectares for Land Cover Changes (LCC), and the minimum width of linear elements is 100 metres. The CLC service delivers important data sets supporting the implementation of key priority areas of the Environment Action Programmes of the European Union as e.g. protecting ecosystems, halting the loss of biological diversity, tracking the impacts of climate change, monitoring urban land take, assessing developments in agriculture or dealing with water resources directives. CLC belongs to the Pan-European component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (https://land.copernicus.eu/), part of the European Copernicus Programme coordinated by the European Environment Agency, providing environmental information from a combination of air- and space-based observation systems and in-situ monitoring. Additional information about CLC product description including mapping guides can be found at https://land.copernicus.eu/user-corner/technical-library/. CLC class descriptions can be found at https://land.copernicus.eu/user-corner/technical-library/corine-land-cover-nomenclature-guidelines/html/.