GISAT has coordinated the PHARE Topic Link on Land Cover (PTL/LC) serving as an unofficial information centre for in the Phare countries on the EEA activities related to land cover and vice versa. Its aim was to promote and optimise the use of the CORINE Land Cover data base in environmental applications or in any other field where environmental information could be of relevance and providing technical co-ordination as well as monitoring of Phare countries’ national land cover inventories for compilation and updating of the European CORINE Land Cover database. The main objective of the PTL/LC work was to provide efficient support to the PHARE accession countries (ACs) in development of national expertise and co-operation with EEA in land cover area.

Besides the priority collaboration with the existing Phare EIONET network, PTL/LC has co-operated with other relevant international organisations working in land cover field (e.g. DG Regional Policy, EUROSTAT, JRC, Council of Europe, UN-ECE, OECD).