Detailed map of Europe's forests by tree type (Copernicus)
What it measures. Classifies land into non-forest, broadleaved forest, or coniferous forest at fine 10-metre detail, following the UN's official forest definition and leaving out tree patches in farmland and cities.
How it's made. Refreshed every three years by the EU's Copernicus Land Monitoring Service at 10-metre resolution, with a minimum mapped patch of half a hectare, across Europe's 38 countries, including French overseas territories.
How & where you'd use it. A go-to layer for forest management, biodiversity assessments, and carbon studies that need an accurate, detailed picture of where different forests grow.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2018-01-01 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Map vegetation, forests and biomass
- Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
- Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description
The High Resolution Layer Forest Type (FTY) provides a forest classification with 3 thematic classes (all non-forest areas / broadleaved forest / coniferous forest) at 10m spatial resolution and with a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 0.5 ha. This raster layer is largely following the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) forest definition with tree covered areas in agricultural and urban context excluded using the respective Forest Additional Support Layer (FADSL). This dataset is provided on a 3-yearly frequency in 10 meter rasters (fully conformant with the EEA reference grid) in 100 x 100 km tiles covering the EEA38 countries. High Resolution Layer Tree Cover and Forest product is part of the European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service.This dataset includes data from the French Overseas Territories (DOMs).
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_vlcc_forest-type_europe_10m_3yearly_v1"], # 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 / xarray Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC