Redesign sample for Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) 2018 - Products Statistical working papers

Eurostat’s Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) provides harmonised statistics on land use and land cover across the European Union. Land use shows the socio-economic usage of a given land: agriculture, commerce, industry, residential, etc. Meanwhile, Land cover refers to the bio-physical coverage of the land: crops, woodland, buildings, roads, etc. LUCAS is characterised by the unique, in-situ information that it provides. Since 2006, Eurostat has carried out this survey every 3 years. The latest LUCAS survey, covering all the 28 European Union (EU) countries, is taking place in 2018. As in the previous rounds, 2018 has been an opportunity to adapt, adjust and improve the LUCAS methodology in order to obtain the most accurate and harmonised data possible, while still allowing for comparison over time. This paper shows the characteristics of the new sampling design used for 2018, and the innovative methodology which is applied to it.