The CORINE programme, which was initiated in the mid to late 1980s by the European Commission, strives to coordinate base information on the state of the European environment with the goal of creating and maintaining a community-wide environmental information system. A first inventory of CORINE Land Cover (CLC) was done 1990, followed by CLC2000 and 2006. The next update is foreseen for 2012.
The CORINE Land Cover comprises a hierarchical nomenclature of 3 levels, where level 3 comprises 44 classes. Out of these 44 29 classes are present in Switzerland. CLC maps artificial surfaces, agricultural areas, forests, semi-natural areas, wetlands and water bodies. The minimum mapping unit is 25 ha, the minimum mapping width 100 m.
Switzerland created a comparable dataset for CLC 1990, which was finished 1998 (Bundesamt für Statistik 1998). It was derived directly from the Swiss Land Use Statistics, but due to differences in nomenclatures, only CLC levels 1 and 2 were included. Fully compatible CLC datasets were produced for 2000 and 2006 after Switzerland became a member of the EEA.