EEA SDI — European Environment Agency geospatial catalogue

Requires: Tier 0 (core). Only scripts/grassland_probability_heatmap.py needs Tier 1 (maps).

European Environment Agency's geospatial-data Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Front-end at https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/. The catalogue is run on GeoNetwork 4.4 and surfaces ~10 000 datasets covering land cover, biodiversity, climate, water, soil, air-quality, marine, energy and transport for the EEA38 (Europe + EFTA + Western Balkans).

Most records are produced by the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) and are mirrored on EEA's discomap ArcGIS server at https://image.discomap.eea.europa.eu/. Since LMI's gis.lmi.is only republishes the Iceland clip of a small subset of CLMS layers, going to the EEA SDI directly opens up many more datasets (CORINE, HRL series, Natura 2000, Imperviousness change, Tree Cover Change, Water & Wetness Probability, Small Woody Features, etc.).

API surface

Endpoint	Purpose	Format
/catalogue/srv/api/site	Service info / version	JSON
/catalogue/srv/api/search/records/_search	Elasticsearch search (rich)	JSON
/catalogue/srv/eng/csw	OGC CSW 2.0.2 GetRecords / GetCapabilities	XML
/catalogue/srv/api/records/{uuid}/formatters/xml	Full ISO 19115 XML for one record	XML
/catalogue/srv/api/records/{uuid}/formatters/xsl-view	Rendered HTML view	XML/HTML
/public/catalogue-graphic-overview/{uuid}.png	Catalogue thumbnail	PNG
/catalogue/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/{uuid}	Human metadata page	HTML

Tip: the obvious-looking GET /catalogue/srv/api/records/{uuid} returns 404 on this catalogue. Use formatters/xml for ISO XML or the _search endpoint with {"term":{"uuid":"..."}} for the JSON view.

No authentication is required for any of these. (Some datasets' WWW:DOWNLOAD links point to https://land.copernicus.eu/ which does require a free Copernicus Land account — see "Download protocols" below.)

Search via the Elasticsearch endpoint

The richest surface. POST a JSON body in standard ES query DSL.

curl -sS "https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/srv/api/search/records/_search?from=0&size=10" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query":{"bool":{
      "must":[{"match":{"resourceTitleObject.langeng":"grassland"}}],
      "filter":[{"geo_shape":{"geom":{
        "shape":{"type":"envelope","coordinates":[[-25,67],[-13,63]]},
        "relation":"intersects"
      }}}]
    }},
    "_source":["uuid","resourceTitleObject.default","link","publicationYearForResource"]
  }' | jq '.hits.hits[]._source.resourceTitleObject.default'

coordinates for envelope are [[west,north],[east,south]] (top-left then bottom-right) in WGS84.

Useful _source fields

Field	Meaning
uuid / metadataIdentifier	Stable record id
resourceTitleObject.{default,langeng}	Title (multilingual)
resourceAbstractObject.{default,langeng}	Abstract
cl_resourceScope[].key	dataset, series, service, nonGeographicDataset, …
cl_topic[].key	INSPIRE topic — environment, farming, imageryBaseMapsEarthCover, …
inspireTheme[]	INSPIRE Annex theme codes
OrgForResourceObject.langeng	Producing organisation
publicationYearForResource	Year the data was published
geom	GeoJSON polygon of the spatial footprint
link[]	List of {protocol, urlObject, nameObject, descriptionObject} items
recordLink_children_uuid[]	UUIDs of child datasets (for series records)
agg_associated[]	Related-dataset UUIDs

Iceland-only filter

Iceland sits between roughly (-25, -13) longitude and (63, 67) latitude. Use the geo_shape filter shown above. Many EEA datasets are EEA38 in scope so they intersect Iceland even when the filename doesn't say so.

CSW (OGC Catalog Service for the Web)

Returns a Dublin-Core summary with <dc:URI> link tags. Useful when you want a quick scan and don't need every metadata field.

curl -sS -G "https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/srv/eng/csw" \
  --data-urlencode "service=CSW" \
  --data-urlencode "version=2.0.2" \
  --data-urlencode "request=GetRecords" \
  --data-urlencode "typeNames=csw:Record" \
  --data-urlencode "resultType=results" \
  --data-urlencode "outputSchema=http://www.opengis.net/cat/csw/2.0.2" \
  --data-urlencode "elementSetName=full" \
  --data-urlencode "constraintLanguage=CQL_TEXT" \
  --data-urlencode "constraint_language_version=1.1.0" \
  --data-urlencode "constraint=AnyText like '%grassland%'" \
  --data-urlencode "maxRecords=20"

The numberOfRecordsMatched attribute in the response tells you the total; pass startPosition=N to page.

Following download links

Each record's link[] array carries one entry per access mechanism. The protocol field tells you what to do with the URL.

Protocol	Meaning	Auth?
OGC:WMS	WMS GetCapabilities URL — visualise as tiles	No
OGC:WFS	WFS GetCapabilities URL — vector download	No
OGC:WCS	WCS GetCapabilities URL — raster download	No
ESRI:REST	ArcGIS REST endpoint (Image-/Map-/FeatureServer)	No
WWW:DOWNLOAD / WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	Direct download	usually yes (Copernicus)
WWW:LINK / WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	Generic web link / docs	No
WWW:URL	Generic web link	No
DOI	DOI URL for citation	No
image/png	Catalogue thumbnail / preview	No

For no-auth programmatic access prefer OGC or ESRI:REST links; they almost always go to image.discomap.eea.europa.eu or to a JRC / EUMETSAT GeoServer that does not require credentials. For bulk downloads (full GeoTIFF tiles) the WWW:DOWNLOAD link points to land.copernicus.eu which needs a free CLMS account.

Helpful Iceland-relevant datasets

(Not exhaustive — use search to discover more.)

UUID	What	Resolution	Year
35a036bb-c027-401c-8625-2ecf722e8461	HRL Grassland mask, Europe	20 m	2015
5ebf3d6e-b148-4d22-b5e5-173a9d8fd661	HRL Grassland mask, Europe	100 m	2018
0b6254bb-4c7d-41d9-8eae-c43b05ab2965	HRL Grassland (annual), Europe	10 m	2017–
a0925bc0-d3d8-49af-ba9d-c4f1cf2b654d	HRL Grassland Change	20 m	2015–2018
82d8f687-3ef1-4b84-89ef-5a1e646137f8	HRL Grasslands (series)	—	—

For Iceland-only clipped versions of HRL Grassland / Tree Cover / Imperviousness / Water-and-Wetness / Dominant-Leaf-Type, see the lmi_hrl skill — those are the same data on gis.lmi.is.

Script

# search by free-text + Iceland bbox
uv run python scripts/eea_sdi.py search grassland --iceland

# search any keyword in any region
uv run python scripts/eea_sdi.py search "tree cover density"

# print one record's metadata, links, and thumbnail URL
uv run python scripts/eea_sdi.py record 35a036bb-c027-401c-8625-2ecf722e8461

# print only the OGC / ESRI links from a record
uv run python scripts/eea_sdi.py links 35a036bb-c027-401c-8625-2ecf722e8461

# download a record's ISO 19115 XML (full metadata)
uv run python scripts/eea_sdi.py xml 35a036bb-c027-401c-8625-2ecf722e8461 \
  -o data/raw/eea_sdi/grassland_2015.xml

Caveats

1. /srv/api/records/{uuid} returns 404 — use the _search endpoint with a term filter on uuid, or formatters/xml.
2. Search hits are paginated — default page size 10, hard cap 1 000 per page (size parameter). Loop with from to enumerate.
3. Series records have empty link[] — you must follow recordLink_children_uuid[] to the child dataset records to find the actual download URLs.
4. The bbox coordinates for geo_shape/envelope are [[w,n],[e,s]] (top-left, bottom-right) — the opposite of the usual GIS minx/miny/maxx/maxy ordering. Easy to invert.
5. WWW:DOWNLOAD to land.copernicus.eu requires registration — for unauthenticated bulk pulls use image.discomap.eea.europa.eu ArcGIS REST/WMS instead.
6. discomap WMS GetMap caps requests at ~10 M output pixels — even though the GetCapabilities advertises MaxWidth=4096 and MaxHeight=4096, requesting both at once returns HTTP 400. The largest aspect-correct frame is around 3500×2666.
7. discomap WMS returns styled RGB images, not raw raster values. For raw probability / index pixel values, decode the legend swatch RGB → bin midpoint (see scripts/grassland_probability_heatmap.py for an example) or use the matching WCS endpoint when available.
8. discomap MapServer exportImage with pixelType=U8 still returns RGBA PNGs for MapServers (vs. ImageServers, where raw values do come through). Single-band raw pulls work only when the metadata link is ESRI:REST → ImageServer.
9. Encoding — all strings are UTF-8 in the JSON/XML responses. Icelandic characters (þ, ð, æ, ö) survive intact.
10. Native CRS varies per layer — Pan-European HRL products are EPSG:5325 (LAEA Iceland) or EPSG:3035 (LAEA Europe); WMS endpoints additionally publish EPSG:3857, 4326. Reproject for area-correct stats.