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Fraction of Vegetation Cover 2013-2024 (raster 20m, 300m), Ground-Based Observations for Validation project sites - version 3.5.0, Dec 2025

Fraction of Vegetation Cover (FCOVER) corresponds to the proportion of ground surface covered by vegetation when observed from nadir.



The GBOV service (Ground-Based Observations for Validation) is a project funded by the European Commission. Its objective is to provide analysis-ready validation data to support the evaluation of Earth Observation products. The core aim of GBOV is to generate upscaled products derived from ground-based measurements.



This dataset consists of Land Products (LPs) generated using Digital Hemispherical Photographs (DHP) collected from in-situ stations located in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. These DHPs are used to extract ground measurements of FCOVER over Experimental Sample Units (ESUs) whose size is comparable to the spatial resolution of Sentinel-2 Level 2 surface reflectance products, which are used for the upscaling.



Each Land Product is distributed at two spatial resolutions: one matching the Sentinel-2 Level 2 surface reflectance resolution (~20 m), and one aggregated to the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) resolution (~300 m).

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2025-12-15
Date (Creation)
2025-11-01
Edition

03.05

Citation identifier
jrc_r_4326_20_m_fcover-gbov_p_2013-2024_v03_r05

Identifier

Code
10.2909/f7289a31-0521-432e-a53c-fa64b10173fa
Codespace

doi.org

Description

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Point of contact
Organisation Individual Electronic mail address Website Role

European Commission

https://commission.europa.eu/

Owner

European Commission's Joint Research Centre

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/

Publisher
Spatial representation type
Grid

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
20 m

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
300 m
Topic category
  • Environment

Extent

Temporal extent

Time period
2013-01-01 2024-12-31

Extent

N
S
E
W




Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • Environmental monitoring facilities
Continents, countries, sea regions of the world.
  • North America

  • Australia

  • Europe

GEMET
  • land
  • geophysical environment
  • vegetation cover
Spatial scope
  • Local
EEA topics
  • Climate
Temporal resolution
  • Irregular

Resource constraints

Access constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
no limitations to public access

Resource constraints

Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

All users of the GBOV products benefit from the free and open access policy as defined in the European Union’s Copernicus regulation (N° 377/2014 of 3 April 2014) and Commission Delegated Regulation (N° 1159/2013), available on the Copernicus programme’s web site. The policy includes lawful use reproduction, distribution, communication to the public, adaptation, modification and combination with other data and information or any combination thereof. Access and use can only be limited in rare cases of security concerns, protection of Third Party risks or risks of service disruption.



By using the products, you acknowledge that these conditions apply and renounce to any claims for damages against the European Union and the GBOV service providers.



Whenever you use the original or modified products or communicate them to the public, you are required to refer to the data source through (at least) the following statement:



"This study has been undertaken using [data/information] from GBOV “Ground Based Observation for Validation” ( https://land.copernicus.eu/global/gbov) founded by European Commission Joint Research Centre FWC932059, part of the Global Component of the European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service."



The generation of GBOV products was possible thanks to data provided by Third Party ground stations’ networks. These data represents years of effort and investment from scientific teams going to the fields, maintaining ground observation stations, ensuring the quality of the data to provide valuable and crucial ground information. For this reason, you are required to acknowledge originating PIs in any public document as follow:



"We thank [list of PIs*] and the [list of networks*] networks for the measurements collected in the field and used to generate GBOV products."

(*) PI list and associated networks are available in the metadata file associated to every single GBOV product. For any question please contact the CLMS service desk at https://land.copernicus.eu/en/contact-service-helpdesk.



By agreeing with this data policy, you accept that your personal details (name, surname, e-mail and institution) are used to track download history and provide Copernicus and data provider with data usage statistics. These statistics will support service evolution and support data providers effort to maintain their valuable activities.

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distribution format
  • GeoTIFF

OnLine resource

Protocol

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

Name of the resource

EEA Taskman ticket

Function
Information
OnLine resource

https://gbov.land.copernicus.eu/

OnLine resource

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset

Report

Result

Title
Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation

See the referenced specification

Resource lineage

Statement

This dataset was derived from Digital Hemispherical Photographs using a published algorithm and an up-scaling procedure. A rigorous Quality Control was then applied on the whole dataset. All source images were visually quality controlled. The dataset has undergone basic quality assurance but has not been formally validated against independent reference data. This is the only and official version of the dataset. The dataset has no legal validity.

Hierarchy level
Dataset

Reference System Information

Reference System Information

Code
EPSG:4326
Maintenance and update frequency

Metadata

Metadata identifier
f7289a31-0521-432e-a53c-fa64b10173fa

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Organisation Individual Electronic mail address Website Role

European Environment Agency

sdi@eea.europa.eu

Point of contact

Type of resource

Resource type
Dataset
Metadata linkage

https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/srv/api/records/f7289a31-0521-432e-a53c-fa64b10173fa

Date info (Creation)
2025-07-29T14:09:24.175416Z
Date info (Revision)
2026-01-14T08:48:59.886111Z

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115/19139

Edition

1.0

 
 
Access to the catalogue
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Overviews

Spatial extent

Keywords

EEA topics

Climate
GEMET

geophysical environment land vegetation cover
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Environmental monitoring facilities
Spatial scope

Local
Temporal resolution

Irregular


Provided by

Access to the catalogue
Read here the full details and access to the data.




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