The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) is an initiative implemented by FAO within the EC-FAO Food Security Programme funded by the European Commission (http://www.foodsecinfoaction.org/News/news_06_06.htm). The GAUL aims at compiling and disseminating the most reliable spatial information on administrative units for all the countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of the spatial dataset representing administrative units. The GAUL always maintains global layers with a unified coding system at country, first (e.g. regions) and second administrative levels (e.g. districts). In addition, when data is available, it provides layers on a country by country basis down to third, fourth and lowers levels. The GAUL is released once a year and the target beneficiary of the GAUL data is the UN community, the Universities and other authorized international and national institutions/agencies. Data might not be officially validated by authoritative national sources and can not be distributed to the general public. A disclaimer should always accompany any use of the GAUL data. About 21 countries have been updated respect to the previous release (see countries_updated.dbf). The GAUL keeps track of administrative units that has been changed, added or dismissed in the past for political causes. Changes implemented in different years are recorded in the GAUL on different layers. For this reason the GAUL product is not a single layer but a group of layers, named "GAUL Set" (see Gaul_Set.pdf). The original dataset containing Level 0 administrative units has been combined by EEA with some attributes data provided within GAUL in a separate file. No data from outside GAUL have been used and it is possible to reconstruct the original dataset by removing the extra attributes added.

This dataset consists of the LandScan global population database of 2008 (grid in WGS84 with a 30" resolution) clipped to Europe together with the Mediterranean Basin and reprojected to EPSG:3035 (Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area 52N10E / ETRS89) with a spatial resolution of 1km². The methodology applied aimed at minimizing any discrepancy in population counts between the original data and the reprojected data at country level. Content: (population count * 10000) per grid cell. No data value: -99

LandScan Global Population Database 2010. Population counts at 30 arc second resolution.

This data set contains the administrative boundaries at country level of the world and is based on the geometry from EBM v12.x. of EuroGeographics for the members of Eurogeographics, the Global Administrative Units Layer (2015) from FAO (UN) and geometry from the Turkish National Statistical Office. This dataset consists of 2 feature classes (regions, boundaries) per scale level and there are 6 different scale levels (100K, 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M and 60M). The public dataset is available at 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M, 60M, while the full dataset at 100K is restricted. This metadata only refers to the full dataset (polygon) at 100k (CNTR_RG_100K_2016 in the GISCO database) and shall only be used internally by the EEA. This metadata has been slightly adapted from the original metadata file provided by Eurostat (European Commission) and is to be used only for internal EEA purposes. For reference, the original metadata file provided by ESTAT (CNTR_2016.xml) is provided together with the dataset. The public dataset is available for download on http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/GISCO/distribution/v2/countries/countries-2016-files.html

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales (1:10m version is stored in the EEA-SDI). Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth one can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software. Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many volunteers and is supported by NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project. This dataset is composed of satellite-derived land cover data and shaded relief presented with a light, natural palette suitable for making thematic and reference maps.

This dataset consists of the LandScan global population database of 2008 (grid in WGS84 with a 30" resolution) clipped to Europe and processed in order to match a LEAC grid (projection EPSG 3035 with a spatial resolution of 1km²). Content: population count per grid cell.

Global estimates of soil organic carbon stocks have been produced in the past to support the calculation of potential emissions of CO2 from the soil under scenarios of change land use/cover and climatic conditions (IPCC, 2006), but very few global estimates are presented as spatial data. For global spatial layers on soil parameters, the most recent and complete dataset is available as the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). The HWSD represents a step forward towards a spatially more detailed and thematically more refined set of global soil data. This dataset contains the organic carbon density (t ha-1) for the topsoil (0 – 30cm) from the amended HWSD. This metadata record is adapted from the orginal one received from JRC.

Global estimates of soil organic carbon stocks have been produced in the past to support the calculation of potential emissions of CO2 from the soil under scenarios of change land use/cover and climatic conditions (IPCC, 2006), but very few global estimates are presented as spatial data. For global spatial layers on soil parameters, the most recent and complete dataset is available as the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). The HWSD represents a step forward towards a spatially more detailed and thematically more refined set of global soil data. This dataset contains the organic carbon density (t ha-1) for the topsoil (30 - 100cm) from the amended HWSD. The original delivery from JRC consisted of two files in IDRISI Raster format, each covering half of the globe. For convenience, these files have been merged at EEA into a single GeoTIFF file covering the whole globe. The original files are in the zip archive HWSDa_OC_Dens_30SEC.zip This metadata record is adapted from the orginal one received from JRC.

This data set represents the coastlines of the world and is based on the European Boundary Map v5.0. from EuroGeographics (scale 1:100.000) (for Eurogeographics members) and the Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) 2008 from FAO (UN) (scale 1:1M and smaller). The data set (100K - 60M) is available to EEA due to EEA having a valid EBM v5.0 licence. These metadata are derived from the original metadata records available at Inspire@EC.

Global estimates of soil organic carbon stocks have been produced in the past to support the calculation of potential emissions of CO2 from the soil under scenarios of change land use/cover and climatic conditions (IPCC, 2006), but very few global estimates are presented as spatial data. For global spatial layers on soil parameters, the most recent and complete dataset is available as the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). The HWSD represents a step forward towards a spatially more detailed and thematically more refined set of global soil data. This dataset contains the organic carbon density (t ha-1) for the subsoil (30 - 100cm) from the amended HWSD. The original delivery from JRC consisted of two files in IDRISI Raster format, each covering half of the globe. For convenience, these files have been merged at EEA into a single GeoTIFF file covering the whole globe. The original files are in the zip archive HWSDa_OC_Dens_30SEC.zip This metadata record is adapted from the orginal one received from JRC.