# Copernicus Global Land Cover Layers--Collection 2  
[PERSON]  
1 Remote Sensing Unit, Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), B-2400 Mol, Belgium; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (L.B. ); [PERSON]SS] (B.S.) 2 Ecosystems Services and Management, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
2 Ecosystems Services and Management, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
3 Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, NL-6708 Wageningen, The Netherlands; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (N.-E.T. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.H.) [PERSON]  
3 Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, NL-6708 Wageningen, The Netherlands; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (N.-E.T. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.H.) [PERSON]  
1 Remote Sensing Unit, Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), B-2400 Mol, Belgium; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (L.B. ); [PERSON]SS] (B.S.) global high-resolution LC map at 30 m resolution, attaining an overall classification accuracy of 65%. Nevertheless, all these LC maps have a major drawback--they have fixed legends and therefore rigid characterization of LC types. Land cover maps are used by various user groups to better understand the current landscapes and the impact we have as global citizens. But at the same time, these LC maps are often hard to use in applications that require up-to-date information, such as forest monitoring, sustainable development goals monitoring, and biodiversity monitoring. The variety in the needs between all these different users makes it hard to create a one-size-fits-all LC map. More elastic LC mapping approaches are thus needed to guarantee high-quality products for these users [14]. As part of the European Copernicus service which aims to provide systematic global monitoring of the Earth's land surface, the Copernicus Global Land Service has recently released yearly global LC maps at 100 m resolution from 2015 onwards [15]. Copernicus' Global Land Cover product aims to provide dynamic LC layers that allow creating custom LC maps that fit the needs of different map users. Therefore, next to a discrete LC map, a set of cover fraction layers is delivered, depicting the percental cover of main LC types in a pixel. This allows the user to tailor the LC product to his application and needs, and to harmonize it to other available LC maps. The first Copernicus Global Land Service Land Cover Map at 100 m (CGLS-LC100)--Collection 1--was provided for the 2015 reference year over the African continent in July 2017. It was derived from 100 m time-series of the vegetation instrument on board of the PROBA satellite (PROBA-V) [16; 17], a database of high-quality LC reference sites and several ancillary datasets. We integrated spectral, temporal and spatial features derived from the PROBA-V time series to improve classification accuracy as recommended by [PERSON] et al. [18] and [PERSON] et al. [19]. Based on the success of this demonstration product for Africa, showing high quality with an overall accuracy of 74.3% and alignment to other continental LC maps [20; 21; 22; 23], Collection 2 of the CGLS-LC100 product was released in May 2019, extending the map to a global coverage for the reference year 2015 [15]. However, Collection 2 was not just a global up-scaling, but also includes major improvements in the map quality, reaching now around 80% or more of overall accuracy for each continent. Further improvements include the switch from the system World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) to the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system and the alignment to the Sentinel-2 tiling grid in order to improve mapping quality in the high latitudes [24]. Moreover, this gridding system facilitates the continuation of the yearly CGLS-LC100 product when switching from PROBA-V to Sentinel-2 as an input data source.