Corine land cover

In 1985 the Corine programme was initiated in the European Union. Corine means 'coordination of information on the environment' and it was a prototype project working on many different environmental issues. The Corine databases and several of its programme have been taken over by the EEA. One of these is an inventory of land cover in 44 classes, and presented as a cartographic product, at a scale of 1:100 000. This database is operationally available for most areas of Europe. Original inventories, based on and interpreted from satellite imagery as well as ancillary information sources, are stored within national institutions. The European reference database is owned by GISCO, the European Commission geographical information system, which is a part of the European Statistic Agency, Eurostat. ETC/TE manages the Corine database (the production database) on behalf of EEA and delivers the updated database to GISCO every 12 months.