Comparability of landscape diversity indicators in the European Union

SUMMARY: CORINE Land Cover allows landscape diversity indicators to be computed and comparisons among European regions to be established. We try to assess here to what extent the indicators are really homogeneous across different countries and which indicators are less dependent on the scale of the information. For this purpose, CORINE Land Cover indicators are compared with similar indicators from more detailed data on some test sites. The results suggest that landscape diversity comparisons among regions depend not only on the landscape itself, but also on the way the CORINE Land Cover methodology has been applied in each region. Comparing diversity in different regions can also give quite different results depending on the indicator selected. Calibrating diversity indicators would require detailed land cover data for a large sample in the EU, possibly from a ground survey with compatible specifications.