LaCoast is a research project undertaken in the mid 1990 under the lead of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and aimed at quantifying the changes of land cover types in a 10 km land strip from the coastline. LaCoast uses CORINE Land Cover version 1990 as its reference dataset and track differences of land cover changes using LANDSAT satellite images from the mid-1970's.

The grid is based on proposal at the 1st European Workshop on Reference Grids in 2003 and later INSPIRE geographical grid systems. The sample grid available here is part of a set of three polygon grids in 1, 10 and 100 kilometres. The grids cover at least country borders and, where applicable, marine Exclusive Economic Zones v7.0, http://www.marineregions.org. Note that the extent of the grid into the marine area does not reflect the extent of the territorial waters.

The EEA coastline for analysis is created for highly detailed analysis, e.g. 1:100 000, for geographical Europe. The coastline is a hybrid product obtained from projects using satellite imagery as data source: EUHYDRO (https://land.copernicus.eu/imagery-in-situ/eu-hydro) and GSHHG (http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/). The defining criteria was altitude level = 0 from EUDEM (https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-dem/view). Outside the coverage of the EUDEM, the coastline from GSHHG was used without modifications. A few manual amendments to the dataset were necessary to meet requirements from EU Nature Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In 2015, several corrections were made in the Kalogeroi Islands (coordinates 38.169, 25.287) and two other Greek little islets (coordinates 36.766264, 23.604318), as well as in the peninsula of Porkkala (around coordinates 59.99, 24.42). In this revision (v3, 2017), 2 big lagoons have been removed from Baltic region, because, according to HELCOM, are freshwater lagoons.

Coastal zones are presented as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each (towards inland). For this dataset, were treated as sea data all areas with class values of 52x (521: coastal lagoons, 522: estuaries, 523: sea and ocean) in Corine Land Cover (details in lineage).

Coastal zones are presented as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each (towards inland). For this dataset, were treated as sea data all areas with a class value of 523 (sea and ocean) in Corine Land Cover (details in lineage).

Coastal zones are presented as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each (towards inland). For this dataset, were treated as sea data all areas with a class value of 523 (sea and ocean) in Corine Land Cover (details in lineage).

Coastal zones are presented as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each (towards inland). For this dataset, were treated as sea data all areas with class values of 52x (521: coastal lagoons, 522: estuaries, 523: sea and ocean) in Corine Land Cover (details in lineage).

The grid is based on proposal at the 1st European Workshop on Reference Grids in 2003 and later INSPIRE geographical grid systems. The sample grid available here is part of a set of three polygon grids in 1, 10 and 100 kilometres. The grids cover at least country borders and, where applicable, marine Exclusive Economic Zones v7.0, http://www.marineregions.org. Note that the extent of the grid into the marine area does not reflect the extent of the territorial waters.

The EEA coastline dataset is created for detailed analysis with a Minimum Mapping Unit of e.g. 1:100000, for geographical Europe. The coastline is a hybrid product obtained from satellite imagery from two projects: 1) EUHYDRO (Pan-European hydrographic and drainage database) [https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-hydro/view] and 2) GSHHG (A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database) [http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/]. The defining criteria was altitude level = 0 from EUDEM [https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-dem/view]. Outside the coverage of the EUDEM, the coastline from GSHHG was used without modifications. A few manual amendments to the dataset were necessary to meet requirements from EU Nature Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In 2015, several corrections were made in the Kalogeroi Islands (coordinates 38.169, 25.287) and two other Greek little islets (coordinates 36.766264, 23.604318), as well as in the peninsula of Porkkala (around coordinates 59.99, 24.42). In this revision (v3, 2017), 2 big lagoons have been removed from Baltic region, because, according to HELCOM, are freshwater lagoons. This dataset is a polygon usable as a water-land mask.

This metadata corresponds to the EUNIS Coastal habitat types, predicted distribution of habitat suitability dataset. Coastal habitats are those above spring high tide limit (or above mean water level in non-tidal waters) occupying coastal features and characterised by their proximity to the sea, including coastal dunes and wooded coastal dunes, beaches and cliffs. Includes free-draining supralittoral habitats adjacent to marine habitats which are normally only very rarely subject to any type of salt water, in as much as they may be inhabited predominantly by terrestrial species, strandlines characterised by terrestrial invertebrates and moist and wet coastal dune slacks and dune-slack pools. Supralittoral sands and wracks may be found also in marine habitats (M). Excludes supralittoral rock pools and habitats, the splash zone immediately above the the mean water line, as well the spray zone and zone subject to sporadic inundation with salt water in as much as it may be inhabited predominantly by marine species, which are included in marine (M). The modelled suitability for EUNIS coastal habitat types is an indication of where conditions are favourable for the habitat type based on sample plot data (Braun-Blanquet database) and the Maxent software package. The modelled suitability map may be used as a proxy for the geographical distribution of the habitat type. Note however that it is not representing the actual distribution of the habitat type. As predictors for the suitability modelling not only climate and soil parameters have been taken into account, but also so-called RS-EVB's, Remote Sensing-enabled Essential Biodiversity Variables, like land use, vegetation height, phenology, and LAI (Leaf Area Index). Because the EBV's are restricted by the extent of the remote sensing data (EEA38 countries and the United Kingdom) the modelling result does also not go beyond this boundary. The dataset is provided both in Geodatabase and Geopackage formats.