Mapping and modelling the impact of land use planning and management practices on urban and peri-urban landscapes in Europe: the MOLAND project

The aim of the MOLAND (monitoring land cover/use dynamics) project is to provide up-to-date, standardised, comparable information on the past, current, and likely future land use development in Europe. The primary role of MOLAND is to provide scientific and technical support to the European Commission's various DGs, services, and associated bodies, which are responsible for the conception, development, implementation, and monitoring of EU policies related urban and regional development. Central to the MOLAND technology is the creation of a detailed GIS database of land use types, transport networks, and socio-economic statistics for each of the study areas, at a mapping scale of 1:25,000. An urban and regional model developed for MOLAND produces additional thematic layers in the MOLAND database, showing future land use development over a twenty-year forecasting period. Indeed, the MOLAND database has been used as the basis for the European Environment Agency's published environmental issue report 30, on the assessment of the spatial development of twenty-five European cities (European Environment Agency, 2002).