Overview and Brief History - Sampling Spatial Units for Agricultural Surveys - page 42

2.3.2 LUCAS

Agricultural statistics in the European Union (EU) are produced by a close synergy
between EUROSTAT 2 and the national statistical services of individual European
countries. EUROSTAT defines the characteristics of the surveys (i.e., methods,
nomenclature, accuracy, timing) and aggregates the data at the EU level.
The Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS, Gallego and Delinc ` 2010 )is
a project funded by EUROSTAT. It was initially developed to offer yearly
European crop estimates. Over time, this survey has become crucial for policy
makers, as it also provides land use data and is a valuable tool for environmental
monitoring.
The main objectives of the LUCAS project are:

• To obtain harmonized data (and in particular, unbiased estimates) for the main
land use and land cover areas, and any trends, at an EU country level.
• To increase the scope of the survey beyond the agricultural domain.
• To include aspects related to the environment, landscape, and sustainable

development.
• To provide a common sampling base (i.e., frame, nomenclature, data treatment)
so that interested member states can obtain representative data at national/
regional level.
• To evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a spatial frame survey as one of the
pillars of the future Agriculture Statistical System.

The precision is expected to be approximately (or better than) 2 % for the main
categories such as wheat, cereals, arable land, permanent grassland, permanent
crops, forests, urban areas, and inland waters.
The sample frame is executed at the country level, because it is not possible to
create a regular grid over the entire European territory for statistical purposes. The
sample frame is based on the official digital geographic data of the administrative
boundaries and coastlines of Europe, available at EUROSTAT GISCO (the Geo-
graphical Information System at the COmmission ).
LUCAS is a spatial reference frame survey based on points sampling. It was
carried out in 2001 and 2003 for EU15. 3 It is based on a systematic sample of almost
100,000 points, grouped in clusters of 10. Systematic spatial sampling was chosen
as the sampling design method. This is because LUCAS is aimed at providing
multi-purpose information, and therefore needs to cover not only agricultural area,

2 The Statistical Office of the European Communities.
3 The EU15 was the number of member countries in the European Union prior to the accession of
ten candidate countries on 1 May 2004. The EU15 comprised the following 15 countries: Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.