Derived 1 km Percentage Land Cover Rasters for United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (2000–2023)

Description This repository contains derived 1 km resolution percentage land cover rasters for the United Kingdom (UK, EPSG:27700) and Northern Ireland (NI, EPSG:29903) for all years from 2000 to 2023. These products were generated from UKCEH Land Cover Map source data, which is available for discrete years only (2000, 2007, 2015, and annually from 2017). Two coordinate reference systems are provided: British National Grid (EPSG:27700) covering the full UK, and Irish Grid (EPSG:29903) for Northern Ireland. These datasets were generated from UKCEH Land Cover Map products accessed via the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC). The data provided here are derived products and are not identical to the original datasets. All intellectual property rights and attribution requirements remain with the original data providers and associated source publications. These data products are designed to be accessed exclusively through the ukbioprepr R package (Rush et al. 2026), which provides functions to download and extract land cover values for user-specified locations across the UK. The package supports both British National Grid and Irish Grid references, and XY coordinates, enabling seamless integration with UK biodiversity survey data. Direct use of the raw raster files outside of the package is not permitted. The ukbioprepr package is available at: https://github.com/crrush7/ukbioprepr The associated Software Note is: Rush, C. R., Cooper, J., Larrosa, C. and Wilkes, M. (2026). 'ukbioprepr': an R package to support reproducible preparation of environmental data for biodiversity modelling in the UK. Ecography 2026: e08413. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08413 Methodology The datasets were produced by: - Extracting 1 km percentage target class rasters from UKCEH Land Cover Map source data for available years (2000, 2007, 2015, and 2017 onwards) - Harmonising land cover classification schemes across years to produce a consistent set of classes spanning the full time series, including aggregating classes where definitions changed between survey years - Generating derived rasters for missing years (2001–2006, 2008–2014, 2016) using pixel-level linear interpolation between the nearest available years, applied independently to each raster cell and land cover class - Reprojecting Northern Ireland data from EPSG:29903 to EPSG:27700 and merging with Great Britain data to produce unified UK products - Masking invalid or placeholder values to ensure consistent spatial coverage across all years No source data are redistributed in this repository. To view the methods used for creation of the derived data products, please visit: https://zenodo.org/records/17609019 Licence This repository is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. Use of these data is restricted to non-commercial applications only, in accordance with the licensing conditions of the original UKCEH source datasets. Source Data and Citation Requirements Users of this repository must cite: 1. The original UKCEH dataset DOIs listed below for each year used, and 2. Rush, C. R., Cooper, J., Larrosa, C. and Wilkes, M. (2026). ‘ukbioprepr’: an R package to support reproducible preparation of environmental data for biodiversity modelling in the UK. Ecography 2026: e08413. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08413 Source Dataset Citations by Year 2000 – Great Britain Fuller, R.M.; Smith, G.M.; Sanderson, J.M.; Hill, R.A.; Thomson, A.G.; Cox, R.; Brown, N.J.; Clarke, R.T.; Rothery, P.; Gerard, F.F. (2002). Land Cover Map 2000 (1km percentage target class, GB). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/d5ee5360-12c5-448c-9d2b-f5c941fe3948 2000 – Northern Ireland Fuller, R.M.; Smith, G.M.; Sanderson, J.M.; Hill, R.A.; Thomson, A.G.; Cox, R.; Brown, N.J.; Clarke, R.T.; Rothery, P.; Gerard, F.F. (2002). Land Cover Map 2000 (1km percentage target class, N.Ireland). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/8eed6d77-714a-438a-aa65-887b1ef62378 2007 – Great Britain Morton, R.D.; Rowland, C.S.; Wood, C.M.; Meek, L.; Marston, C.G.; Smith, G.M. (2014). Land Cover Map 2007 (1km percentage target class, GB) v1.2. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/fdf8c8d3-5998-45a5-8431-7f5e6302fc32 2007 – Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Rowland, C.; Wood, C.; Meek, L.; Marston, G.; Smith, G.; Wadsworth, R.; Simpson, I. (2011). Land Cover Map 2007 (1km dominant target class, N. Ireland). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/62dfb6c0-da6b-4b4c-a1c0-595bca2f1e5f 2015 – Great Britain Rowland, C.S.; Morton, R.D.; Carrasco, L.; McShane, G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Wood, C.M. (2017). Land Cover Map 2015 (1km percentage target class, GB). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/505d1e0c-ab60-4a60-b448-68c5bbae403e 2015 – Northern Ireland Rowland, C.S.; Morton, R.D.; Carrasco, L.; McShane, G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Wood, C.M. (2017). Land Cover Map 2015 (1km percentage target class, N. Ireland). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/9e08e1c3-d2c6-41d0-8919-d9015b38ead2 2017 – GB and Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Marston, C.G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2022). Land Cover Map 2017 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/be0bdc0e-bc2e-4f1d-b524-2c02798dd893 2018 – GB and Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Marston, C.G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2022). Land Cover Map 2018 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/9b68ee52-8a95-41eb-8ef1-8d29e2570b00 2019 – GB and Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Marston, C.G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2022). Land Cover Map 2019 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/e5632f1b-040c-4c39-8721-4834ada6046a 2020 – GB and Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Marston, C.G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2022). Land Cover Map 2020 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/d6f8c045-521b-476e-b0d6-b3b97715c138 2021 – GB and Northern Ireland Marston, C.; Rowland, C.S.; O’Neil, A.W.; Morton, R.D. (2022). Land Cover Map 2021 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/a3ff9411-3a7a-47e1-9b3e-79f21648237d 2022 – GB and Northern Ireland Marston, C.G.; Morton, R.D.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2024). Land Cover Map 2022 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/0808d05b-f6da-4e76-a145-48d45a109707 2023 – GB and Northern Ireland Morton, R.D.; Marston, C.G.; O’Neil, A.W.; Rowland, C.S. (2024). Land Cover Map 2023 (1km summary rasters, GB and N. Ireland). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/96bc980a-31b4-4d1b-87e9-007d4932a56b Acknowledgements We acknowledge the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) for provision of the Land Cover Map data via the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC). Notes on Licensing and Use This repository contains derived data products created from UKCEH Land Cover Map source data. Users must comply with the licensing conditions of the original UKCEH datasets. Full details are available via the EIDC dataset pages linked in the Citations section of this repository. Use of these derived data products is restricted to non-commercial applications only. Any commercial use requires a separate agreement with UKCEH. For queries regarding commercial use of the original UKCEH datasets, please contact: [e-mail]