In comparison to the Ecosystem Type Map 2006 v2.1, the Ecosystem Type Map 2012 v3.1 shows changes in four specific aspects:

a) Changes of the mapping ruleset:

The ruleset to translate land cover information from CLC to EUNIS level 2 has been improved to v3.1 based a validation with in-situ vegetation relevés and experience from ETM v2.1. Crosswalks to integrate new datasets of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service are also based on ruleset v3.1.

b) Use of updated datasets:

• CORINE Land Cover 2012 accounting layer (instead of CLC 2012 status layer)

• HRL Forests 2012 (Forest Type, Tree Cover Density)

• HRL Imperviousness 2012

• OpenStreetMap (OSM) data 2015 (main roads, selected land use information)

c) Integration of new available Copernicus data:

• Urban Atlas 2012

• Riparian Zones 2012

• Natura 2000 (N2k) 2012

• HRL Grassland 2012

• HRL Permanent Water Bodies 2012

d) Spatial extension to include Azores

Mapping process:

The basic approach for the ecosystem type mapping is the geographic and thematic refinement of a certain land cover input datasets to translate the original LC information into the EUNIS classification.

The mapping approach is based on four elements:

1. Original Land cover (LC) information to be mapped into EUNIS L2:

- CORINE Land Cover

- Copernicus Local Components: Urban Atlas, Riparian Zones, Natura 2000

- High Resolution Layers (Forest, Imperviousness, Grassland, Permanent Waterbodies)

- OpenStreetMap (Main roads, selected LC classes)

2. Mapping rules based on crosswalks:

Crosswalks provide the information, from what original land cover information EUNIS classes can be derived. The Mapping rules define which (stable and variable) datasets are needed for the refinement and how they have to be classified (setting thresholds) to translate the original LC information into the EUNIS classification.

3. Stable core input datasets

Datasets to be used for the refinement: Environmental zone, potential natural vegetation, altitude etc.

4. Variable input datasets

HRL Imperviousness, HRL Forest (Tree Cover Density)

Each LC input dataset is processed and mapped into EUNIS L2 independently with its own crosswalk. The components are assembled together later in the following order (priority from low to high):

1. CLC 2012 accounting

2. Urban Atlas 2012

3. Riparian Zones 2012

4. Natura 2000 (N2k) 2012

5. HRL Imperviousness 2012

6. OSM land use 2015

7. HRL Grassland 2012

8. HRL Permanent Water Bodies 2012

9. OSM main roads 2015

10. HRL Forest 2012 (Forest Type)

Outputs:

a) Primary output is the actual map representing EUNIS classes on Level 2 with a resolution of 100 x 100 m.

b) The Reliability Map is the secondary output containing geometric & thematic reliability, rule_ID, data source and MAES L2 classification for each raster cell.

More information can be found in the ETC/BD Technical Paper 11/2018 "Ecosystem Type Map v3.1-Terrestrial and marine ecosystems" provided with the dataset (Ecosystem_mapping_v3_1.pdf).