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

In the European Union, since 2006, a tri-annual survey has sampled land cover and land use information under the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS). A total of 1 351 293 observations from 651 780 unique locations for 106 variables were collected during the five LUCAS surveys, including a total of 5.4 million landscape photos representing the observer view in the four cardinal directions as well as point photos showing the actual surveyed point. In addition to these previously published photos, additional LUCAS cover photos were recorded, showing a close-up view and thus more detail of the sampled tree, crop and plant species. Between 2006 and 2018, 875 661 LUCAS cover close-up photos were collected, showing the relevant land cover and plant species on the entire photo with the absence of any other elements of the landscape in the frame. Photos containing potential privacy content were identified following a two-stage deep learning anonymisation process, resulting in the removal of 346 photos before publication. This paper summarises the collection of LUCAS cover photos and the filtering for mandatory privacy issues and also 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 of 874 646 photos, potential applications relying on recent advances in geo-spatial analysis and statistical learning, such as large-scale biodiversity monitoring, are discussed. The data are available on the JRC Open Data Catalogue: http://data.europa.eu/89h/c83906d7-1817-495f-b4ba-f2e4b8859d48 (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, 2022).