# Copernicus Global Land Cover Layers--Collection 2
## 5 Conclusions and Outlook  
Copernicus currently delivers a dynamic global LC product at 100 m spatial resolution for the reference year 2015 (CGLS-LC100 Collection 2). Next to a discrete layer, the product also includes continuous field layers or \"fraction maps\" for all basic LC classes that provide proportional estimates for vegetation/ground cover for the LC types. This continuous classification scheme may depict areas of heterogeneous LC better than the standard classification scheme and, as such, can be tailored for application use (e.g., forest monitoring, rangeland management, crop monitoring, biodiversity and conservation, monitoring environment and security in Africa, climate modeling, etc.). Moreover, the cover fractions layers allow generating LC maps in different legend schemes (i.e., Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) or LCCS). The Minimum Mapping Unit of 100 m and consistent mapping approach allows the usage of the global product on several scales, i.e., from regional to global planning. The highly adaptable CGLS-LC100 mapping approach was already used by other research groups, e.g., the NatureMap group, a project of the United Nation World Conservation Monitoring Centre, created a global forest management layer at 100 m with our support [42]; or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) funded WaPOR (Water Productivity Open-access Portal) project which generated yearly agriculture maps for Africa starting at 2010 extending the crop class into irrigated and rainfed agriculture [26]. Our assessments show that the overall accuracy of the discrete layer at classification level 1 of the CGLS-LC100 Collection 2 product reaches 80.2+/-0.7% at a global and continental scale. The targeted overall accuracy of 80% has therefore been met. Among the fractional LC layers, snow and ice, built-up, water and lichen/moss fraction maps show the lowest errors, followed by crops and bare and sparse vegetation fraction types. On the other hand, fractional herbaceous vegetation cover layer has the highest error. Our independent quantitative comparisons show that the CGLS-LC100 2015 Collection 2 map has higher accuracy than other available global LC maps. The third edition of the CGLS-LC100 layers (Collection 3) is currently under preparation covering the 2015 reference year and annual LC changes from 2016 to 2019 over the entire globe. Firstly, the map for 2015 will be improved with additional training data (\(\sim\) 40,000 points) focusing on regions with lower accuracies. Secondly, for users looking to map land change processes, such as desertification, de- or re-forestation, urbanization, the impact of major infrastructure developments and so on, it is important to compare LC maps across different years. The new and additional yearly LC layers facilitate these processes. Continuity of the service from 2020 onwards is feasible through the use of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 EO data in the processing line, or going back prior to 2015 through the use of Landsat EO data. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Attribute** & **Value** \\ \hline
**Dataset** & Collection 2 \\ \hline
**Provided epochs** & 2015 \\ \hline
**Dataset version** & 2.0.2 \\ \hline
**Concept DOI** & 10.5281/zenodo.3243508 \\ \hline
**Version DOI** & 10.5281/zenodo.3243509 \\ \hline
**Citation** & [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], \& [PERSON]. (2019). Copernicus Global Land Service: Land Cover 100m: Collection 2: epoch 2015 (Version V2.0.2) [Data set]. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3243509 \\ \hline
**Direct Access** & [[http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3243509](http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3243509)]([http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3243509](http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3243509)) \\ \hline
**Data layers per epoch** & 20 \\ \hline
**File Size** & 63.3 GBytes \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Digital Object Identifier information for the CGLS-LC100 collection 2 product. **Author Contributions:** conceptualization, M.B. ; methodology, M.B., L.B. and B.S.