UKCEH has developed national hydrology and land cover spatial datasets. Government, researchers, councils, charities, consultancies and utility & insurance companies successfully use these for a wide range of applications in pursuit of academic, policy-related and commercial interests.
We have a long history of using satellite imagery to map land cover from the first national Land Cover Map of Great Britain in 1990 to the current production of annual Land Cover Maps for the UK. The Land Cover Map family of products includes crop maps, maps of fertiliser & pesticide applications, as well as land cover change data. UKCEH’s Land Cover® plus: Crop maps were the first detailed, interactive, digital maps of cropping, providing information each year on crop types for every field in Great Britain. By combining these data with national survey data on pesticide and fertiliser use, we created UKCEH Land Cover®plus Fertilisers and CEH Land Cover®plus Pesticides, which map estimated fertiliser and pesticide applications.
Our customers range from small charities needing data on a specific site to government departments whose remit covers national extents.
Most of UKCEH’s datasets are freely available, and we do not charge data fees for educational and academic use. We charge for certain uses of certain datasets, which allows us to reinvest in our science and future data development. However, all our Land Cover Maps are available free of data fees for non-commercial use, meaning affordable use within, or one behalf of, public sector, charity and other non-profit organisations. The price for commercial use of our Land Cover® plus: Crop maps ranges from a 10km2 quote to a £30,000 national coverage quote.
