Service Contract for Copernicus Hotspot Monitoring Services — Production of Very High Resolution Land Cover/Land use Datasets in Selected Natura 2000 Sites. Reference Year 2018 Including Change Layer

Description

Service contract for updating the 2012 LC/LU maps of selected Natura 2000 (N2K) sites including a 2 km buffer (which is not part of the actual protection network) for the reference year 2018. The following data outputs are expected: 1) N2K LC/LU change map 2012-2018 2) N2K LC/LU status map 2018 3) Revised N2K LC/LU status map 2012 In addition, the contract covers an analysis of pressures potentially exerted from the buffer zone onto the N2K sites, and an assessment of changes of the grassland habitats within and around the N2K sites, providing an indication of the protective effect of the network. Production tasks cover the main scope and workload of this call for tenders and consist of LC/LU change mapping 2012-2018 and status mapping 2018. Typically, LC/LU change is based on existing LC/LU status map and by merging LC/LU status 2012 and change (2012-2018) a new LC/LU status update (in this case 2018) is generated. The current N2K LC/LU product (one single file) contains three complementary elements that can be extracted: (a) LC/LU status layer (over a selection of N2K sites) for the reference year 2006; (b) LC/LU status layer (over a selection of N2K sites) for the reference year 2012; (c) LC/LU change layer 2006-2012 derived from and fully consistent with a) and b) to characterise the N2K site evolution over time. This data model (one single file accounting for both years and change) can no longer be applied in a reasonable way to account also for the 2018 reference year. Tenderers shall explain in their offer which strategy they intend to apply to implement this task and which data model they propose for the update. The output of the work shall be under the form of thematic LC/LU vector maps. Assessment tasks are also covered by this call for tenders. The output of those tasks shall be an updated grassland assessment covering the whole period ranging from 2006 to 2018 based on quantitative information extracted from the database and according to the dedicated N2K ‘Grassland-change association matrix’.