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. Two complementary product groups provide detailed information on the state and characteristics of riparian zones across Belgium: 1. Land Cover / Land Use (LCLU) 2. Green Linear Elements (GLE)

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. This datasets contains the FUA for Belgium (Antwerpen, Brugge, Bruxelles_Brussel, Charleroi, Gent, Kortrijk, Leuven, Liege, Mons, Namur and Oostende).

Natura 2000 (N2K) is a network of core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species, as well as for some rare natural habitat types which are protected in their own right. It stretches across all 28 EU countries, both on land and at sea. The aim of the network is to ensure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats that are listed under the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive. This dataset contains the sites in Belgium.

The Copernicus Urban Atlas (UA) provides European, comparable and detailed land use and land cover maps for the main Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). The Urban Atlas Street Tree Layer (UA-STL) is a separate layer of the Urban Atlas 2012. It includes contiguous rows or patches of trees covering 500 m² or more with a minimum width of 10 m within the urban mask of the Urban Atlas 2012. Gaps between tree patches or within a larger patch that are less than 10m wide are included in the Street Tree Layer. There is no thematic content other than the presence or absence of trees. The UA-STL is a new product and no accuracy threshold was provided as part of the Urban Atlas specifications. The UA STL product validated currently covers just over 7% of the total UA2012 area.

The product is made of 5 "high resolution layers" covering all the Belgian territory as part of a European-wide coverage for the reference year 2015. The 5 layers concern 4 distinct themes: Imperviousness, Forest, Grasslands, Wetness and Water. The 5 layers were produced by an automatic classification based on satellite images and collateral data and achieved by private companies (EEA service providers), and they were verified by Belgium. At the Belgian level, verification and enhancements were made by IV for the northern part and SPW for the outhern part. The NGI coordinated the project. Data was produced with funding by the European Union. Copyright Copernicus Programme DISCLAIMER: National Geographic Institute has undertaken to distribute the data on behalf of EEA under Specific Contract No 3436/R0-Copernicus/EEA.57005 implementing Framework service contract No EEA/IDM/R0/16/009/Belgium. National Geographic Institute accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the content and use of these data.” The European Environment Agency accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on this site and the information does not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the EEA or other European Communities bodies and institutions.