Monitoring Land Use Change with Earth Observation
Land cover and land-use data are particularly important due to their ability to provide objective and quantitative information that informs the development, implementation, and assessment of policies.
NODES has been involved in land cover and land use mapping for more than 15 years, contributing to the production of the C-GLOPS Copernicus global land service https://land.copernicus.eu/global/index.html, and more recently to ESA’s WorldCover https://esa-worldcover.org/en and WorldCereal Products https://esa-worldcereal.org/en . These products provide critical baseline data for a number of EU policies including the latest EUDR regulation on deforestation free commodities https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en or the EU Energy Directive.