ESA WorldCover 2021 (10m global land cover)
Global 10m land-use and land-cover map — pairs with USDA's Cropland Data Layer (CDL) wherever CDL doesn't reach.
What this is
Global 10m-resolution land-cover map from Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2 fusion, 2021 epoch (v200). Eleven categorical classes (tree cover, shrubland, grassland, cropland, built-up, bare/sparse, snow, water, herbaceous wetland, mangroves, moss/lichen). Native-grain map overlay served via ESA's Terrascope service — no login required, public tiles in a Google-compatible matrix set. Field-level cropland breakdown (dominant class plus proportions of others) is live in the public field-enrichment API — see /developers.
Why we surface it
Outside the US, this is what lets UFFDA say 'this polygon is cropland' confidently. Pairs with FTW to give global queries a baseline land-cover answer. The map overlay and the per-field API attribution draw on the same dataset.
What you can do with it
Shown for commercial use. Personal, research, and nonprofit use is often more permissive — switch the verdict lens on the catalog.
- Internal / individual use
- Free to use for any purpose, including commercial and AI training. Nothing's triggered until you share it.
- Redistribute the data
- Fine to use and redistribute, including commercially. One string attached: credit the original source wherever it shows up.
- Republish a derivative
- Build on it and republish freely, commercial or not. You must credit the original source in what you ship.
- Build into a private product
- Fine to build into a closed or commercial product. Attribution is still owed wherever the data is actually exposed to users.
This decoder is a starting point, not legal advice. For commercial deployment, run the actual license terms past someone who reads them for a living.
◆ Schema · Sample · Citation
No schema, sample, or citation on file for this one yet.
Related — same domain
- Hansen Global Forest Change v1.12 (UMD / Google / USGS / NASA)CC-BY 4.0
- JRC Global Surface Water — Occurrence (EC Joint Research Centre / Google)Copernicus open data (free, no use restriction; attribution required: 'Source: EC JRC/Google', plus citation of Pekel et al. 2016, Nature 540:418–422)
- Dynamic World (10m near-real-time land cover)CC-BY-4.0
- GLAD GLCLUC annual land cover (UMD)CC-BY-4.0