Europe wide agricultural land use systems by harmonizing the Copernicus High Resolution Layers on grassland and croplands

This paper presents a Europe-wide agricultural land use systems map produced by the integration and harmonization of grasslands and croplands layers from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service High Resolution Layers (HRL) in Europe. By utilizing high-resolution spatial data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions, the study applies a predefined set of logical rules to identify crop-grass sequences by combining the HRL products. The resulting maps provide detailed classifications of permanent grasslands, permanent crops, arable systems, and land use changes across 38 countries in the European Environment Agency network (EEA38) from 2017 to 2021. European agriculture is dominated by permanent grasslands (45.5%), followed by arable systems including temporary grassland (33.5%), permanent crops (3.8%), and land use change (1.6%). While the study is based on HRL products with substantial accuracy, some discrepancies (<3% of classified areas), such as disagreements in land use classifications across years and data gaps, present opportunities for further refinement and improvement. The derived harmonized agricultural land use systems data is a step forward for assessments in land and soil management, nature restoration, and climate mitigation targets.