Detailed map of Europe's grasslands (Copernicus)
What it measures. A simple grassland-or-not map at fine 10-metre detail, covering managed, semi-natural, and naturally grassy land but leaving out short-lived temporary grasslands.
How it's made. Produced yearly from 2017 onward by the EU's Copernicus Land Monitoring Service at 10-metre resolution across Europe's 38 countries, including French overseas territories.
How & where you'd use it. A foundational layer for biodiversity, carbon, and land-use studies that need to know exactly where Europe's meadows and pastures are. A companion reliability layer is available.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2017-01-01 → 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 Grassland (GRA) dataset rovides a binary status layer of grassland/non-grassland mask. This grassy and non-woody vegetation baseline product includes all kinds of grasslands: managed grassland, semi-natural grassland and natural grassy vegetation. It does not include temporary grasslands, which are masked out using the corresponding Ploughing indicator (PLOUGH), indicating on the number of years since a pixel was last ploughed. This dataset is provided annually starting in 2017 with 10 meter rasters (fully conformant with the EEA reference grid) in 100 x 100 km tiles covering the EEA38 countries. High Resolution Layer Grasslands product is part of the European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. Confidence layer available for the dataset. 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_grassland_europe_10m_yearly_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