The Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) data as a source of detailed land cover changes for the SDG 15.3.1 land degradation indicator

The Integrated Administration and Control System IACS consist of several digital and interconnected databases, notably: a system for identifying all agricultural plots in EU countries called the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), a system that allows the farmers to graphically declare the agricultural areas for which they apply for aid (the geospatial application GSA). To improve the IACS data availability, EC DG AGRI, in collaboration with the EC DG JRC, has established an IACS data-sharing process to be implemented by the Member States. Thanks to the underpinning INSPIRE Directive and its infrastructure, we are starting to have now millions of parcel data available. These data might be further used within climatic, environmental and soil-related domains, as well as provide additional insights together with precision agriculture data. However, to date, there is not a unique usable platform providing EU-wide IACS data to improve data availability and data reuse further. IACS data are being used and tested in many soil-related use cases, notably in the “land degradation indicator” that will provide a high-resolution agricultural spatial data time series and implement these products into the SDG 15.3.1 indicator geospatial framework. It includes aggregated statistics and actionable recommendations to show what can be done with them to deepen our knowledge of farms and how they can be used for policy support and development. Co-designing usage of IACS data will provide broader understanding of the role of IACS in the frame of the European Commission soil policy development. The analysis carried out in this soil use case provided an application of the UNCCD SDG 15.3.1 indicator at the NUTS3 scale using global and EU available datasets for the three sub-indicators, additionally for the sub-indicator land cover IACS data provided high-resolution information on land cover changes that might cause degradation or improvement in delivering ecosystem services. The SDG 15.3.1 LD indicator calculation has been carried out using the Trends.Earth software; in particular it implies the reclassification of LC from an equivalent level 3 in CORINE to an equivalent level 2, which reduces the quality of the information (cropland includes arable land, permanent crops and mixed classes with over 50% of crops; grassland includes natural grassland and managed pasture land; rangelands include shrubland, herbaceous and sparsely vegetated areas; forestland includes all forest categories and mixed classes with tree cover greater than 40%). IACS data substantially improved the LD assessment in the timeframe (2010-2020) by adding a high-resolution land cover change layer. Now, only the spatial information derived by GSA was used. However, the integration of parcel topography and climatic proxies can reveal patterns and provide useful information for the early detection of LD and the correct management of degraded areas. This system can contribute to better detection of Land degradation drivers.