Street trees in European cities (Copernicus)
What it measures. Maps the location of street trees and rows of urban trees across Europe's larger cities, capturing patches as small as a twentieth of a hectare.
How it's made. ESA Copernicus produces this layer within its Urban Atlas from satellite imagery, with updates about every three years.
How & where you'd use it. Supports green-infrastructure planning, urban cooling and shade studies, and efforts to expand city tree canopy.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2021-01-01 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The Urban Atlas Street Tree Layer product provides detailed information about street trees in Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) in Europe. The product has a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 0.05 hectares (500 m²) and a Minimum Mapping Width (MMW) of 10 meters. It is part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) and covers urban areas across Europe with a 3-yearly temporal repeat rate. The data is provided in flatgeobuf format with EPSG:3035 projection and includes both the street tree layer and an urban mask auxiliary layer.
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["clms_urban-atlas_street-tree-layer_europe_V005ha_vector_static_v01"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC