DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8171860
title: Pan-EU Landmask: 10m Resolution Geospatial Land Coverage with Administrative Boundary details on country and regional level

description: <strong>Pan-EU Land Mask Summary</strong> Considering the land mask for pan-EU, we will closely match the data coverage of https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european i.e. the official selection of countries listed here: https://lanEEA39d.copernicus.eu/portal_vocabularies/geotags/eea39. There are a total of three landmask files available, each of which is aligned with the standard spatial/temporal resolution and sizes of AI4SoilHealth Data Cube specifications, which is: Xmin = 900,000, Ymin = 899,000, Xmax = 7,401,000, Ymax = 5,501,000, with Coordinate reference system of epsg:3035. Additionally, these files include a corresponding look-up table that provides explanations for the values present in the raster data. The scripts used to generate these masks can be found here. The masks are: Landmask ISO-code country mask NUTS3 mask <strong>Name convention</strong> To ensure consistency and ease of use across and within the projects, the files here are named according to the standard OpenLandMap file-naming convention. The OpenLandMap file-naming convention works with 10 fields that basically define the most important properties of the data, this way users can search files, prepare data analysis etc, without even needing to access or open files. The 10 fields include: Generic variable name: country.code Variable procedure combination i.e. method standard (standard abbreviation): iso.3166 Position in the probability distribution / variable type: c Spatial support (usually horizontal block) in m or km: 30m Depth reference or depth interval e.g. below ("b"), above ("a") ground or at surface ("s"): s Time reference begin time (YYYYMMDD): 20210101 Time reference end time: 20211231 Bounding box (2 letters max): eu EPSG code: epsg.3035 Version code i.e. creation date: v20230722 An example of a file-name based on the description above: <em>country.code_iso.3166_c_100m_s_20210101_20211231_eu_epsg.3035_v20230722</em> <strong>Landmask</strong> The basic principle to create the land mask is to include as much as land as possible, to avoid missing any land pixels and ensure precise differentiation between land, ocean and inland water bodies. Two reference datasets are used, WorldCover, 10 m resolution. EuroGlobalMap, with shapefiles of administrative boundaries, inland water bodies, ocean and landmask. When generating the land mask, the two reference datasets in a way that: If either of the two reference datasets identifies a pixel as land, it is considered a land pixel in our mask. Regarding ocean and inland water bodies, a pixel is classified as a water pixel only when both reference datasets confirm its identification as water. The landmask consists of 4 values: 10: not in the pan-EU area, i.e. out of mapping scope 1: land 2: inland water 3: ocean This landmask is available in 10m, 30m, 100m, 250m, and 1km resolution formats respectively. The coarse resolution landmasks (&gt;10 m) are generated by resampling from the 10m resolution base map using resampling method “min” in GDAL. This “min” method allows taking the minimum values from the contributing pixels, to keep as much land as possible. <strong>ISO-3166 country code mask</strong> This ISO-3166 country code mask is created from EuroGlobalMap country shapefile. This mask is available in 10m, 30m and 100m resolution. In this raster file, each country is assigned a unique value, which allows for the interpretation and analysis of data associated with a specific country. The values are assigned to each country according to iso-3166 country code, which can be found in the corresponding look-up table. The coarse resolution masks (&gt;10 m) are generated by resampling from the 10m resolution base map using resampling method “mode” in GDAL. <strong>NUTS-3 mask</strong> The nuts-3 code mask is created from the European NUTS3 shapefile. In this raster file, each unique NUT3 level area is assigned a unique value, which allows for the interpretation and analysis of data associated with specific NUTS3 regions. The values of pixels and its associated meanings can be found in the corresponding look-up table. This nut-3 code mask is available in 10m, 30m and 100m resolution formats. The coarse resolution masks (&gt;10 m) are generated by resampling from the 10m resolution base map using resampling method “mode” in GDAL. It should be noted that the ISO-code country mask covers a more extensive area compared to the NUTS3 mask. This broader coverage includes countries like Ukraine and others beyond the NUTS3 mask, while NUTS mask shows more details about regional administrative boundaries.