Europe’s fragile nature is endangered through a multitude of threats. With the ongoing climate change and the accompanying increasing risk of extreme weather events pressure on nature, biodiversity and our own living conditions will further increase steadily.

In order to counteract these threats, the European Union (EU) has implemented a series of environmental directives, like the Water Framework Directive, the upcoming Soil Thematic Strategy, the Urban Thematic Strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy, the Natura 2000 Network and Flood Directive as well as the new Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The directives are obligating Member States to manage their natural resources in a sustainable way. In addition, international policies such as the Kyoto and post-Kyoto policies or further efforts towards adaptation to Climate Change need to be served as well.

The GMES (Global Monitoring of Environment and Security) Land Monitoring Core Service (LMCS) has been set up to operationally provide sound, reliable and affordable geo-information products throughout Europe and over the globe.

GSE Land Information Services is a GSE project (GMES Service Element) funded by the European space Agency (ESA) within the European GMES initiative as contribution to the joint initiative. GSE Land aims to deliver geo-information services over large areas and for a wide spectrum of land applications, focusing on two of the GMEs priorities “Land Cover Change in Europe”, and “Environmental stress in Europe”.

The GSE Land Consortium has mapped an area of almost 300.000 sqkm and delivered the resulting services. All validated products are now accessible through the GSE Land geodata server.

All GSE Land services are particularly designed to support public authorities at various levels of responsibility in their reporting obligations and improved management of natural resources. Across Europe, such authorities are facing the challenge to fulfil increasing and changing reporting obligations that arise from policies and directives recently established by the European Commission.