LMI High Resolution Layers (Copernicus HRL Iceland 2015)

Pan-European Copernicus Land Monitoring Service "High Resolution Layers" clipped to Iceland and re-served by Landmælingar Íslands. Five thematic binary/percentage rasters, all from the 2015 reference year, all 20 m native resolution, all in EPSG:5325 (ETRS89 / LAEA Iceland).

Catalogue UUID: 58e1ed85-df4d-408d-a34f-d0a60628cb34 Metadata page

OGC services

WMS:  https://gis.lmi.is/geoserver/High_Resolution_Layer/wms
WCS:  https://gis.lmi.is/geoserver/High_Resolution_Layer/wcs
WMTS: https://gis.lmi.is/geoserver/gwc/service/wmts

The same workspace is mirrored at https://gis.natt.is/geoserver/High_Resolution_Layer/ (Náttúrufræðistofnun) — either host works.

Layers

Short name	WMS layer / WCS coverage	What	Pixel coding
grassland	Grassland / High_Resolution_Layer__Grassland	Managed, semi-natural & natural grassy vegetation	1 grass · 0 non-grass · 254 no-data inside Iceland · 255 outside
tree_cover	Tree_Cover_Density / High_Resolution_Layer__Tree_Cover_Density	Tree canopy density 0-100 %	uint8 percentage; 255 no-data
imperviousness	Imperviousness / High_Resolution_Layer__Imperviousness	Sealed surface 0-100 %	uint8 percentage; 255 no-data
water_wetness	Water_and_Wetness / High_Resolution_Layer__Water_and_Wetness	Permanent / temporary water & wetness	class codes
dominant_leaf	Dominant_Leaf_Type / High_Resolution_Layer__Dominant_Leaf_Type	Broadleaved / coniferous in tree-covered pixels	class codes

Bounding box (EPSG:5325): 1399300, 53900, 2007200, 609200 (m) Grid: 30394 × 27764 pixels @ 20 m

Fetching

# Full 20 m GeoTIFF — Grassland is ~865 MB uncompressed
uv run python scripts/lmi_hrl.py fetch grassland

# Downsampled (scaleFactor 0.2 → 100 m, ~33 MB)
uv run python scripts/lmi_hrl.py fetch grassland --scale 0.2

# Quick WMS preview — useful for sanity-checking before a big WCS download
curl -o preview.png "https://gis.lmi.is/geoserver/High_Resolution_Layer/wms\
?service=WMS&version=1.3.0&request=GetMap&layers=Grassland&styles=\
&format=image/png&transparent=true&width=800&height=600\
&crs=EPSG:3057&bbox=200000,300000,800000,700000"

Grassland-area sanity check

The Grassland layer marks ~4,036 km² (≈3.9 % of Iceland) as grassland under the Copernicus Pan-European definition. This is much smaller than the Graslendi polygons (vistgerðir L9.*) recorded in Náttúrufræðistofnun's 1:25 000 vistgerðir map — the two products use different definitions:

• Copernicus HRL Grassland is a Pan-European mask calibrated mainly to managed lowland pastures and meadows — agricultural grassland plus semi-natural lowland grass. Most of Iceland's tundra-grass and heath is classified as "non-grassland".
• NÍ vistgerðir L9 captures Iceland's full natural-grass habitats (mólendi-graslendi, valllendi, snjódældir, sjávarfitjar, etc.).

Use HRL when comparing across European countries; use NÍ vistgerðir when mapping Iceland's natural ecosystems.

Caveats

• Native CRS is EPSG:5325, not the usual Iceland CRS (EPSG:3057). Reproject with rasterio.warp or pass srsName=EPSG:3057 on WMS requests.
• The WCS server returns uncompressed GeoTIFFs by default. Expect ~840 MB per full-resolution layer; reproject + LZW-compress locally if you need to ship them.
• Reference year is 2015 — use Sentinel-derived national products (Náttúrufræðistofnun vistgerðir 2023, Skógræktin natural-birch layer) when freshness matters.
• 255 is the NoData fill outside Iceland and 254 is the in-mask "could not classify" code; mask both before computing area or statistics.