European Land Use Patterns (EU-LUPA) - ESPON 2013

Land use has changed drastically during the last fifty years (ESA SP 2006) sometimes with important negative effects such as urban sprawl, soil sealing, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, soil degradation, floods or desertification. The type of land use change varies among different types of regions. Based on the hypothesis that socio-economic activities are reflected in land use the project understands land use as how the land is used and how it is related to socio-economic activities. This means that at a single point multiple uses can be present. Until now, land use and land use change in Europe have been mainly addressed from a thematic perspective. There is a need to integrate all these different sector views. Land use characteristics are becoming increasingly multi-functional, crossing not only sectors but also administrative borders. Thus, the objective of the project is to develop a consistent methodology for analysing comparable information about European regions and cities, based on data from different sources and at different levels. Moreover, the project aims to supply regionalised information integrating the physical dimension (land cover) with socio-economic (land use) and environmental dimensions, in order to understand land use dynamics, land use changes and current land use patterns in the European territory, identifying main challenges in different types of territories, regions and cities and defining the policy recommendations to cope with the challenges.

Inception Report