Copernicus Land Monitoring Service - HR-VPP
Discover more about the pan-European High-Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity (HR-VPP) products provided by the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. These satellite-derived data products give us detailed and objective insights into vegetation phenology, production and tree-cover disturbance over the European land surface.
Supporting environmental monitoring and management
The HR-VPP service provides a variety of data products to obtain objective insights into vegetation dynamics across Europe. The HR-VPP is part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), supporting environmental monitoring and management.
Objective information on key vegetation indicators
The pan-European High-Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity (HR-VPP) products are derived from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites and provide information on key vegetation indicators such as phenology (seasonal cycles like leaf emergence and fall), and productivity (plant growth and biomass production), crucial for monitoring land cover, agriculture, forestry, and ecosystem health. In addition, the tree-cover disturbance products are added to the portfolio. Numerous application benefit from the use of the HR-VPP products such as Common Agricultural Policy reporting, urban planning, climate change mitigation and detailed assessments of vegetation responses to disturbances like droughts, storms, wildfires, insect infestations, and human influence.
The high spatial and temporal resolution of the CLMS HR-VPP dataset enhances our ability to monitor vegetation dynamics and assess both climatic and human-induced impacts on ecosystems. Originally released in 2021, the CLMS HR-VPP product suite will be continued and expanded in the new contract that started in 2024.
The new HR-VPP product suite is generated over the entire the EEA38 + UK for the period of January 1st 2017 onwards. It provided three product groups at a high spatial detail (10 m x 10 m):
- High Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity - HR-VPP:
HR-VPP2 aims to further enhance the suite of products available to estimate vegetation phenology across large areas, leveraging satellite observations to track seasonal changes in green biomass and photosynthetic activity. Building on the success of HR-VPP1, the precursor service, vegetation phenology was estimated for the -pan-European land area from Sentinel-2 (S-2) observations at 10 x 10 m spatial resolution. HR-VPP2 will further evolve the HR-VPP product suite to provide vital parameters and data that explain the dynamics of vegetation growth and productivity across the pan-European landscape.
- Medium Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity - MR-VPP:
The future of the pan-European Medium Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity (MR-VPP) is guaranteed within the HR-VPP2 contract. The MR-VPP dataset will be extended in the future by using data from Sentinel-3 at 333 m resolution. The entire MR-VPP dataset from 2000 will be recalibrated and harmonized between MODIS and Sentinel-3 inputs. These data provide extensive time series that enable studies on trends and co-variations with climate drivers, although they operate at lower spatial resolution than HR-VPP. The two datasets are thus complementary, and address needs of different user communities from local or national to regional and continental study interests.
- Vegetation Disturbance Tree Cover - VDTC:
Vegetation Disturbance Tree Cover (VDTC) is a novel product introduced to the HR-VPP2 service and is a response to the recently proposed EU regulation on a monitoring framework for resilient forests therefore explicitly requesting a new standardised data collection by the Commission on tree cover disturbances at pan-European scale. Biotic and abiotic forest disturbances are important drivers of ecosystem dynamics. The new HRL VDTC products will provide several information layers on tree cover disturbances at 10 x 10 m spatial resolution based on an analysis of the full Sentinel-2 time series starting from 2017.
The Copernicus Land Monitoring HR-VPP data products are accessible via an S3 buckets on the WekEO public cloud. In 2025 all data will be migrated into the Copernicus Data Space Ecosytem (CDSE).
A European partnership
The HR-VPP consortium brings together leading experts in Vegetation Phenology, Productivity, and Tree-cover disturbance, Operations and User involvement.
The production of the HR-VPP products under Lot 1 is being led by VITO Remote Sensing in partnership with European top experts from Lund University, Joanneum Research, and Space4Environment.
- VITO Remote Sensing (Belgium), the consortium leader, responsible for the system platform, the actual production and daily quality monitoring, data access, the helpdesk and the definition of the GPP product
- LUND University (Sweden), expert in time-series filtering technique and derivation of phenological and productivity parameters, originator of the TIMESAT software package, and responsible for the definition of the NPP
- Joanneum Research (Austria), expert in tree-cover disturbance monitoring
- Space4environment (Luxembourg), expert in user support and uptake activities
The review and validation process of HR-VPP under Lot 2 is being led by ACRI-ST, with support from the University of Southampton and the University of Sevilla.
