Data Management Plan

This section describes the data sources used for analysis in Protar, as well as the data access policies for the results of the same.

Data Sources

The Protar web application has two main data sources: The Natura 2000 protected area database and the Corine Land Cover dataset. Both datasets are published under a full and open access policy.

In addition to these two main datasets, statistical area boundaries are used to aggregate historic land cover in protected areas to regional and country levels. Finally, a base map layer is used to support the visualization of the data.

All data sources are described in some more detail below.

Natura 2000

The Natura 2000 dataset is a network of protected areas throughout Europe. It was established under the 1992 Habitats Directive and is the centrepiece of EU nature & biodiversity policy. The network currently covers about 18% of Europe’s territory and consists of 27372 protected areas.

The data is contributed by regional authorities to a centralized database, which is managed by the European Environment Agency (EEA). The database consists of Geographic data and tabular data. The geographic data is available in two Geographic Information System (GIS) formats (sqlite and shapefile), and the tabular data as csv or excel tables.

According to the EEA terms of use, the re-use of the Natura 2000 dataset is permitted free of charge for commercial or non-commercial purposes, provided that the source is acknowledged and that the entire item is reproduced. The EEA policy follows the Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament. The data can be accessed here.

Corine Land cover

The Corine Land Cover (CLC) dataset is a comprehensive and consistent land cover data layer for all of Europe.

It is available for four years: 1990, 2000, 2006, and 2012. Landcover change layers are available. In addition to these land cover layers. These represent the land cover change between each of the above years. The 2012 version of the dataset is still in production hand has not been finalized. Nevertheless, to take advantage of the most up to date data, the latest available version (v18.4) is used in Protar. The data can be updated once the final version of the 2012 CLC is available.

The CLC dataset is published in various GIS formats, including both vector and raster files. The data is published under a full and open access policy and is distributed by the Copernicus Land Monitoring Programme. The data can be accessed here.

Regional Summary Boundaries

The analysis conducted in Protar intersects the Natura 2000 protected area boundaries with the CLC dataset to compute landcover and landcover change statistics for the available years. These values are computed for each of the roughly 27 thousand protected areas.

While this detailed information might be relevant for managing protected areas and learning more about them, the data is also aggregated to give overviews over broad trends on a regional and country level.

The geographical boundaries used for aggregation are derived from the boundaries of the statistical areas of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) geographical boundaries. These boundaries are distributed through the EEA data portal under the same open access policy as the CLC dataset. It can be used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial purposes. The data can be accessed here.

Base Maps

The geographical data used in Protar will be displayed on online maps in various parts of the web application. In these visualizations, basemaps are used to give context to the protected areas and the land cover data.

The basemaps used in Protar have been produced in a collaboration between CartoDB and Stamen Design, and are described here. The basemaps are designed specifically for data overlays and are therefore ideal for Protar’s purpose.

The source code to reproduce the maps is available on GitHub, the source code and the basemap tiles are released under a Creative Commons CC3.0 License and have been derived from OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.

Protar Analysis Results

The main results of the analysis conducted in Protar are data on landcover and landcover change in all protected areas of the Natura 2000 network. This information is visualized in the web application which will be publicly accessible.

The visualizations are driven by a REST API, a Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface. The API is also publicly accessible and provides structured access to the results of the Protar analysis. Protar’s API root can be found here.

The Protar api is setup with Cross- Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) headers through the django-cors-headers app, so it can readily be used from within other applications anywhere on the web.

All results are published under the European Union Public License (EUPL) Version 1.1.