LUCAS Cover photos 2006–2018 over the EU: 874,646 spatially distributed geo-tagged close-up photos with land cover and plant species label

Abstract. In the European Union, a tri-annual surveyed sample collects land cover and land use information under the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey since 2006. A total of 1,351,293 observations at 651,780 unique locations for 106 variables along with 5.4 million landscape and point photos were collected during five LUCAS surveys. In addition to these photos, a set of previously unpublished LUCAS Cover photos were also taken, i.e. following the protocol, a close-up view of the tree, crop, and plant species. These photos contain more details so that tree, crop, and plant species should be identifiable. Between 2006 and 2018, 875,661 LUCAS Cover photos that show the relevant land cover in its entirety were collected. Due to surveyor differences, the images sometimes display elements that require a two-stage deep learning anonymisation process, after which 346 photos were removed before publication. This paper summarizes the collection of LUCAS Cover photos, the filtering for mandatory privacy issues, and provides links to download the data along with the photo metadata, and cross-links to the corresponding LUCAS harmonised survey data. Moreover, after presenting the final public and open dataset consisting in 874,646 photos, potential applications relying on recent advances in geo-spatial analysis and statistical learning such as large scale biodiversity monitoring are discussed.