Linking MODIS-derived forest and cropland land cover 2011 estimations to socioeconomic and environmental indicators for the European Union's 28 countries

With the proliferation of satellite-derived data, it is now possible to link land cover with socioeconomic and environmental indicators. This manuscript focuses on the 2011 forest and cropland estimations for the European Union's 28 countries (EU28) derived from moderate resolution imaging spectoradiometer observations and identifies links to socioeconomic indices such as the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, urbanization degree (UD), Human Development Index (HDI), ecological footprint, and total biocapacity. Results show that GDP per capita and UD are related to forest decrease, as countries with high GDP per capita have a 10% higher urban population and on average 40% less forest share than the EU28 average. The negative relation between the urban population and forest share is even stronger within the moderate GDP countries. Linear fit models reveal that for these countries, a 5.0% increase in urban population leads to a 7.4% decrease of forest share and a 3.9 % increase of cropland share, something contradictory to the general belief that urban population increase is mostly at the expense of agricultural land. In addition, affluent countries with higher HDI tend to have smaller forest per capita values, which is less than half of the EU28 average. Such statistics can become an important indicator for policy advisors for assessing sustainable development.