PANGEA sc, in collaboration with Agriconsulting Roma, will implement this survey in 7 EU member countries: Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, and Slovenia.
The survey aims to gather harmonized data on land cover/land use and agro-environmental aspects across EU Member States, to improve the availability and quality of land cover/use and environmental statistics.
The project started in 2000, and in 2018 it reached its maximum, covering all’EU-28 countries.
The next LUCAS survey is planned for 2022 with a two-fold objective an in-situ survey or field survey, based on field data to be collected between March and September 2022, and a campaign, where sites are photo-interpreted in the office, to be concluded by March 2023. For the statistical sample of the LUCAS survey, a regular 2 km grid with over 1,000,000 points is overlaid on the EU territory. In 2018 the points to be visited in the field consisted of approximately 238.000 points. Around 900 field surveyors visited in-situ points. Besides having specific knowledge relevant for the task, all surveyors received training on the harmonized methodology and the LUCAS technical instructions. Almost 100.000 points were directly photo-interpreted to cover areas not easily accessible by surveyors.
New elements compared to Lucas 2018 survey are:
- An extended grassland assessment (similar to some of the elements of the grassland module) on 40.000 points within the LUCAS core
- A consolidated and simplified grassland module on 20.000 points
- An observation of the landscape for the Copernicus programme (simplified approach on 150.000 points
- A new module on landscape features, the assessment for each LUCAS point concerned consists in an evaluation of 41 sub-points located in 100 square meters around the LUCAS point for a total of 93.000 LUCAS points. This module includes an ex-ante photo interpretation of landscape features and a collection of soil samples module.
The project is structured in 13 tasks:
Task 1: Testing the Data Management Tool (DMT) 2022
Task 2: Preparation of the survey documentation
Task 3: Preparation of the material for the field survey
Task 4: Preparation of the IT and communication infrastructure
Task 5: Selection of the technical team
Task 6: Training for project managers
Task 7: Training of supervisors, surveyors, photo-interpreters (standard and LF), and quality controllers
Task 8: Data collection and data entry into LUCAS DMT 2022, soil sampling and data transmission between surveyor and RO and/or CO, Eurostat and JRC
Task 9: Internal quality control
Task 10: Transmission of soil samples, tools, and documentation to the JRC
Task 11: Follow-up visits
Task 12: Data correction
Task 13: Weekly report
PANGEA will be responsible for:
Task 7: Appropriate training will be provided to supervisors and surveyors;
Task 8: Assignment of points to surveyors, in particular, Task 8c: Collection of field data
Task 12: Scrupulous checking of the collected data will be done, with corrections if there are errors.
Want to be updated on project progress? Write to info@pangeasc.com