CORINE Land Cover 2012– 4th CLC inventory completed in Poland

The first European and Polish CORINE Land Cover map was created for the reference year 1990, then subsequently for 2000 and 2006. The long heritage of CLC inventories allows researchers to perform a long-term analysis of land cover dynamics at national and European scale. This article focuses on the re-sults of the CLC2012 inventory and analysis of land cover changes which occurred between 2006 and 2012. The 4th CORINE Land Cover inventory was carried out by the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography (IGiK). After an effort of one and a half year of mapping using visual satellite image interpretation, the CORINE Land Cover 2012 and land cover changes 2006-2012 for the entire country have been completed. The total area of land cover changes between 2006 and 2012 reached about 1% of the territory of Poland (309 741 ha). More than 75% of land cover changes occurred in forest and semi-natural class, almost 19% in the artificial class, 5% in agriculture land and the remaining 1% in wetlands and water bodies.