The European Settlement Map. A fine scale European wide building map suited to quantify human presence in mountain areas of Europe

 

 

Mountains socio-ecological system are both complex and vulnerable. Europe’s mountain socio-ecological system have evolved over millennia and continue to adapt to the pressure of a changing climate and to changing societal demands. Scientist and practitioners have now at disposal a number of datasets to better understand socio-ecological dynamics on Europe’s mountain, including the European Settlement Map (ESM), a 2x2  m resolution building map generated for 39 European countries including Turkey (Sabo et al 2021). The map is produced based on very high spatial resolution satellite imagery form a mix of sensors acquired through the European Coperncius program and a combination of ancillary datasets including land use. The 2 x 2 m² spatial resolution map is well suited to study and quantify the presence of buildings in small settlements typical of mountain areas. The settlement map distinguishes between residential and nonresidential buildings. It covers the epoch 2013 and 2018 and thus allows quantifying the change in the building stock between the two epochs. The datasets is particularly suited to assess exposure- and change in exposure - to natural hazards, to assess accessibility and cost of transport. It can be used as a spatial infrastructure to model societal impact on protected areas and on ecosystem services. The map will be combined with population data from censuses to provide insights on depopulation in the more marginal mountain areas of Europe as well as to assess the growth of buildings and infrastructure in the municipality with higher rate of development.  The datasets will be available as open source, and feedback from the mountain community of researcher and practitioners will be welcome to understand the interest for this information and the need for future map updates.