Riparian zones represent transitional areas occurring between land and freshwater ecosystems, characterised by distinctive hydrology, soil and biotic conditions and strongly influenced by the stream water. They provide a wide range of riparian functions (e.g. chemical filtration, flood control, bank stabilization, aquatic life and riparian wildlife support, etc.) and ecosystem services. The Riparian Zones products will support the objectives of several European legal acts and policy initiatives, such as the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, the Habitats and Birds Directives and the Water Framework Directive. Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) classification is tailored to the needs of biodiversity monitoring in a tailored buffer zone along large and medium-sized European rivers (with Strahler levels 3-8 derived from EU-Hydro). LC/LU is extracted from VHR satellite data and other available data in a buffer zone of selected rivers. The classes follow the pre-defined nomenclature on the basis of MAES typology of ecosystems (Level 1 to Level 4) and Corine Land Cover, providing 80 distinct thematic classes with a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 0.5 ha and a Minimum Mapping Width (MMW) of 10 m. The production of the Riparian Zones products was coordinated by the European Environment Agency in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme.

The Urban Atlas provides pan-European comparable land use and land cover data for Functional Urban Areas (FUA). The Street Tree Layer (STL) is a separate layer from the Urban Atlas 2012 LU/LC layer produced within the level 1 urban mask for each FUA. It includes contiguous rows or a patches of trees covering 500 m² or more and with a minimum width of 10 meter over "Artificial surfaces" (nomenclature class 1) inside FUA (i.e. rows of trees along the road network outside urban areas or forest adjacent to urban areas should not be included). Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

The European Urban Atlas provides reliable, inter-comparable, high-resolution land use and land cover data for 800 Functional Urban Area (FUA) for the 2012 reference year in EEA39 countries. The spatial data can be downloaded together with a map for each FUA covered and a report with the metadata for the respective area. Additional information (product description, mapping guidance and class description) can be found here: https://land.copernicus.eu/user-corner/technical-library/urban-atlas-2012-mapping-guide-new Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.