Its rich product portfolio will ensure both the continuation and evolution of successful precursor HRLs, such as Forest and Grassland, and the establishment of new HRL products focusing on crops and agricultural practises. The implementation of HRL VLCC will happen with funding by the European Union.
With the new HRL Vegetated Land Cover Characteristics (VLCC), the European Environment Agency (EEA) will substantially extend and integrate the information content of its high-resolution vegetation monitoring products. The new VLCC will ensure continuity and further densification of the well-established HRL Forest and Grassland product time series. Furthermore, it will also shed additional light on a part of the European vegetation that has so far not been addressed in detail by Copernicus.
“Drawing on the latest AI-based technologies for satellite time series processing in a highly integrated monitoring approach, VLCC will close the long-existing ‘crops gap’ in the European CLMS portfolio”.
André Stumpf, VLCC project manager at GAF
In particular, the HRL VLCC will comprise pan-European mapping of several new agriculture-related CLMS products such as annual crop types, agricultural cropping patterns and grassland mowing until the year 2023, while ensuring consistency with the grassland and forest products.
The VLCC will form part of the pan-European component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), making regular large-scale information products available to a broad user community from European public bodies to EEA member and cooperating countries, regional environmental authorities, research and academia.
The consortium led by GAF - a 100% e-GEOS company - is composed of companies such as GeoVille (Austria), VITO (Belgium), CLS (France) and Evenflow (Belgium).