CORDIS Archive
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August 2003 | |||||
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In the frameThe LUCAS survey collected data on land use in Europe, enabling assessment of both agricultural and environmental changes. Linked with other surveys, LUCAS may well prove very useful in monitoring the effectiveness of the CAP's recent focus on environmental sensitivity. The 40-year-old Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has traditionally promoted intensive production, but a succession of recent challenges has steered it towards a more environmentally sensitive approach. Agenda 2000 introduced payments to farmers for using their private resources to make improvements beyond good farming practices. The 2001 Gothenburg European Council required resources to be shifted from market support to rural development, and the CAP mid-term review in July 2002 defined the gaps that still exist between working CAP practice and its declared environmental aims.This changing emphasis means we need to define, and then monitor, indicators that enable us to assess the impact agriculture is having on the environment and the landscape. An informal grouping of representatives from the Commission's DGs for Agriculture and Environment, plus Eurostat, the Joint Research Centre and the European Environment Agency, has been analysing the various monitoring tools available. The latest publication, the third from this group, looks at the use of the Land Use and Cover Area-Frame Survey (LUCAS) for developing agricultural-environmental indicators of landscape condition. Species by species analysis Eurostat devised LUCAS with the primary aim of obtaining harmonised, unbiased data at EU level on the main land uses, such as cereal cultivation, arable land, permanent grassland, forests and urban areas, with their respective extents and changes over time. It consists of a field survey in spring on land use and environmental aspects, and an autumn survey to gather information on yields and agricultural techniques. The pilot project, launched in 2001, covered only 13 Member States, as access to the countryside in the UK and Ireland was then limited by foot and mouth disease. Land use was sampled at ten points within each of about 10,000 squares of 18km by 18km (the grid size chosen was the best compromise between data precision and cost). The results describe land use according to three levels of detail. The first distinguishes between the major types, e.g. cropland or woodland; the second, e.g. for cropland divides into cereals or root crops; and the third into individual species e.g. common wheat or durum wheat. LUCAS also provides for multiple land use, e.g. olive trees grown in wheat fields, and collects information on environmental features like the incidence of flooding or fire. Interviews with farmers provide details of agricultural practices like crop rotation and crop protection measures, and transects within the sample squares assess changes in land use. Extension to acceding countries LUCAS provides extensive information covering the EU member states and will soon be extended to the acceding countries - the next survey is being carried out in 2003. Separate articles in the publication examine the detailed results, and individual national examples show how they can be used to determine changing patterns of land use. The data also illustrate how the LUCAS methods can be integrated with other types of surveys (CORINE, IACS, NATURA 2000 and surveys of agricultural aids and bird diversity) to provide a fuller picture. Comparison of the survey types shows a high degree of correlation, but each contributes individual aspects and there are some issues of ensuring their accuracy is comparable. Between them, the surveys already present much information which can be used to derive comprehensive indicators of land use. This depends on collecting further data at regular intervals, to maintain coverage of the changes occurring in Europe's landscape.
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