TechnicalGIS

Land cover datasets by country

Theme
Land cover
Countries
112
National sources
162
Global datasets
22
Last verified

National land cover and land use maps, plus global 10 m–500 m products such as ESA WorldCover, Dynamic World, Esri LULC and MODIS. This page lists all 162 national land cover sources in the catalogue, country by country, after the 22 global datasets.

Global land cover datasets

  • Copernicus Global Dynamic Land Cover (CGLS-LC100) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    Copernicus Land Monitoring Service · Global

    Annual 100 m global land cover 2015–2019 with discrete classes plus cover fractions for each class.

    • Land cover
    Licence
    Copernicus open licence (free, full and open; attribution)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    land.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • ESA CCI Land Cover (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative · Global

    Consistent annual 300 m global land cover maps from 1992 onwards in 22 UN-LCCS classes, continued by the C3S service.

    • Land cover
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Free and open (ESA CCI data policy; attribution)
    Formats
    NetCDF, GeoTIFF
    Link
    climate.esa.int

    Verified

  • Esri / Impact Observatory 10 m Land Use Land Cover (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Esri / Impact Observatory / Microsoft · Global

    Annual 10 m global land use/land cover in 9 classes from Sentinel-2, 2017 onwards; download by UTM zone tile.

    • Land cover
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, COG
    Link
    livingatlas.arcgis.com

    Verified

  • LUCAS Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Commission (Eurostat) · Europe

    Field survey of land cover and land use at hundreds of thousands of geolocated points across the EU every three years since 2006, with landscape photos and topsoil samples; widely used as reference data to train and validate land cover maps.

    • Land cover
    • Agriculture & soils
    • Environment
    Licence
    Eurostat reuse policy (free, attribution)
    Formats
    CSV
    Link
    ec.europa.eu

    Verified

  • Hansen Global Forest Change (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    University of Maryland GLAD / Google · Global

    Annual 30 m tree-cover loss from Landsat since 2001 plus 2000 tree cover, in 10° tiles (version 1.12, to 2024).

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    storage.googleapis.com

    Verified

  • MODIS Land Cover Type (MCD12Q1) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    NASA / USGS LP DAAC · Global

    Annual 500 m global land cover since 2001 in several classification schemes (IGBP, UMD, LAI); good for long time series.

    • Land cover
    Licence
    Public domain (NASA open data policy)
    Formats
    HDF, GeoTIFF
    Link
    earthdata.nasa.gov

    Verified

  • Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    European Environment Agency · Europe

    CORINE Land Cover (1990–2018), Urban Atlas, high-resolution layers, EU-DEM and global vegetation products; free login for some downloads.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    • Elevation / DEM
    Licence
    Copernicus open licence (free, full and open; attribution)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, GeoPackage
    Link
    land.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • Dynamic World (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    Google / World Resources Institute · Global

    Near-real-time 10 m land-use/land-cover probabilities for every Sentinel-2 scene since 2015, served through Google Earth Engine.

    • Land cover
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    dynamicworld.app

    Verified

  • ESA WorldCover (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Space Agency · Global

    10 m global land cover in 11 classes for 2020 (v100) and 2021 (v200) from Sentinel-1 and -2; also mirrored on AWS and Planetary Computer.

    • Land cover
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    COG
    Link
    esa-worldcover.org

    Verified

  • ETH Global Canopy Height 2020 (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    ETH Zurich (EcoVision Lab) · Global

    Global 10 m canopy top height for 2020 from Sentinel-2 and GEDI lidar with a deep learning ensemble (Lang et al., 2023), with per-pixel uncertainty; also in Google Earth Engine.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    COG, GeoTIFF
    Link
    langnico.github.io

    Verified

  • Global Forest Watch Open Data Portal (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    World Resources Institute · Global

    Downloads of tree-cover loss and gain, deforestation alerts, fires and land-use layers; the GFW map itself now lives at Global Nature Watch.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (most datasets; see each)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, Shapefile
    Link
    data.globalforestwatch.org

    Verified

  • High Resolution Canopy Height Maps (Meta and WRI) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Meta and World Resources Institute · Global

    Global 1 m canopy height map predicted from Maxar satellite imagery with a self-supervised vision transformer (Tolan et al., 2024); GeoTIFF tiles on AWS S3 with no login.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    registry.opendata.aws

    Verified

  • AlphaEarth Foundations Satellite Embeddings (annual, COG mirror) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Google and Google DeepMind (mirror by Taylor Geospatial on Source Cooperative) · Global

    64-dimensional annual embeddings at 10 m from the AlphaEarth Foundations geospatial foundation model, 2017 to 2025, as int8 COGs by UTM zone; no login needed. Use the provided VRTs, because the COGs are stored bottom-up. Attribution: The AlphaEarth Foundations Satellite Embedding dataset is produced by Google and Google DeepMind.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    COG, VRT
    Link
    source.coop

    Verified

  • Digital Earth Africa (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    Digital Earth Africa · Africa

    Analysis-ready Landsat and Sentinel data for Africa plus derived products (water observations, cropland extent, coastlines) on AWS.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Hydrology
    • Agriculture & soils
    Licence
    Free and open (most products CC BY 4.0)
    Formats
    COG, STAC, WMS
    Link
    digitalearthafrica.org

    Verified

  • EEA Datahub (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Environment Agency · Europe

    European environmental datasets: Natura 2000, water bodies (WISE), noise, air quality, emissions and the EEA reference grid.

    • Environment
    • Land cover
    • Hydrology
    • Open data portal
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (EEA reuse policy; most datasets)
    Formats
    GeoPackage, Shapefile, GeoTIFF, WMS
    Link
    eea.europa.eu

    Verified

  • FAO Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform (opens in a new tab)

    Portal Cost: Free

    Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN · Global

    Over 1 million FAO geospatial layers (soils, crops, water productivity WaPOR, land cover, livestock) with map viewer and catalogue.

    • Agriculture & soils
    • Land cover
    • Open data portal
    Licence
    Per dataset (mostly CC BY 4.0)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, Shapefile, WMS, API
    Link
    data.apps.fao.org

    Verified

  • Global Mangrove Watch (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Global Mangrove Alliance / Aberystwyth University / JAXA · Tropical and subtropical coasts

    Mangrove extent and change maps 1996–2020 at 25 m from L-band SAR and Landsat, with country statistics.

    • Marine & coastal
    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, Shapefile
    Link
    globalmangrovewatch.org

    Verified

  • Google Earth Engine Data Catalog (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Mixed

    Google · Global

    Catalogue of 1,000+ public raster and vector datasets; analysis runs in Earth Engine, which requires a registered Cloud project.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Per dataset; Earth Engine free for non-commercial use, paid for commercial
    Formats
    API, GeoTIFF
    Link
    developers.google.com

    Verified

  • JRC Global Surface Water Explorer (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Commission Joint Research Centre / Google · Global

    30 m maps of where and when surface water occurred from 1984 onwards (occurrence, seasonality, change, transitions) from Landsat.

    • Hydrology
    • Land cover
    Licence
    Free, no restrictions (Copernicus programme); cite Pekel et al. 2016
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    global-surface-water.appspot.com

    Verified

  • Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free with registration

    European Space Agency / European Commission · Global

    Official free access to the full Sentinel-1, -2, -3 and -5P archives (10–300 m) with STAC, OData, openEO and S3 APIs; free account needed for downloads.

    • Imagery
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Land cover
    Licence
    Copernicus open licence (free, full and open; attribution)
    Formats
    SAFE, COG, STAC, OData
    Link
    dataspace.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • Global Human Settlement Layer (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Commission JRC · Global

    Built-up surface, building height, population grids (GHS-POP) and degree of urbanisation from 1975 to 2030 at 10 m–1 km.

    • Population
    • Buildings
    • Land cover
    • Census & statistics
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • Microsoft Planetary Computer (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    Microsoft · Global

    Over 100 analysis-ready datasets (Sentinel, Landsat, NAIP, ERA5, land cover) behind a free STAC API; data access needs no account.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Environment
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Per dataset (mostly open; shown on each collection page)
    Formats
    COG, Zarr, STAC
    Link
    planetarycomputer.microsoft.com

    Verified

Land cover sources by country

Africa 50 countries

Algeria 1
Angola 1
Benin 1
Botswana 1
Burkina Faso 1
Burundi 1
Cameroon 1
Central African Republic 1
Chad 1
Côte d'Ivoire 1
Democratic Republic of the Congo 1
Djibouti 1
Egypt 1
Equatorial Guinea 1
Eritrea 1
Eswatini 1
Ethiopia 1
Gabon 1
Ghana 1
Guinea 1
Guinea-Bissau 1
Kenya 3
Lesotho 1
Liberia 1
Libya 1
Madagascar 1
Malawi 1
Mali 1
Mauritania 1
Morocco 1
Mozambique 1
Namibia 1
Niger 1
Nigeria 1
Republic of the Congo 1
Rwanda 2
Senegal 1
Sierra Leone 1
Somalia 1
South Africa 4
South Sudan 1
Sudan 1
Tanzania 1
The Gambia 1
Togo 1
Tunisia 1
Uganda 1
Western Sahara 1
Zambia 1
Zimbabwe 1

Asia 17 countries

Afghanistan 1
Bhutan 1
Cambodia 2
China 4
Hong Kong 1
India 4
Japan 3
Laos 1
Lebanon 1
Myanmar 1
Nepal 1
Pakistan 1
Singapore 2
South Korea 2
Thailand 1
Türkiye 1
Vietnam 2

Europe 16 countries

Estonia 1
Finland 1
France 1
Germany 2
Iceland 1
Ireland 1
Italy 1
Malta 1
Netherlands 1
Norway 2
Poland 1
Portugal 1
Spain 2
Sweden 1
Switzerland 3
United Kingdom 5

North America 12 countries

Belize 2
Bermuda 1
Canada 3
Dominica 1
Grenada 1
Haiti 1
Mexico 1
Puerto Rico 2
Saint Lucia 1
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1
United States 4
United States Virgin Islands 1

South America 12 countries

Argentina 2
Bolivia 2
Brazil 5
Chile 2
Colombia 1
Ecuador 1
Guyana 1
Paraguay 2
Peru 2
Suriname 1
Uruguay 1
Venezuela 1

Oceania 5 countries

American Samoa 1
Australia 6
Guam 1
New Zealand 3
Northern Mariana Islands 1

Tutorials that use land cover data