European Reference Grids

In the context of INSPIRE it is expected that exchange of soil related data at regional, national and European level will happen in a grid- or raster -like fashion. The basis for such work is the availability of standard or reference grids in a common co-ordinate system with fixed cell sizes and common cell coding. A proposal for such grids has been adopted during the European Reference Grids Workshop, held at Ispra (October 2003).

The Land Resource management Unit has implemented this proposal and created a number of reference grids for the EU25 countries, with cell sizes of 1km and 10km. Each cell carries a unique cell_id identifier compliant to the grid proposal. All grids are in the ESRI polygon shapefile format. The co-ordinate system is the ETRS LAEA system proposed by INSPIRE and is embedded in the shapefiles.

1km x 1km Reference Grids

The 25 1km x 1km reference grids for each of the EU25 countries are the following:

Reference Grid / Country	No of Rows	No of Cols	Size (MB)	Preview Raster
Austria	350	650	6
Belgium	300	350	3
Cyprus	180	200	1
Czech_Republic	350	550	5
Denmark	400	550	6
Estonia	300	400	3
Finland	1250	750	24
France	1150	1100	32
Germany	950	700	17
Greece	850	1000	23
Hungary	400	550	6
Ireland	450	400	4
Italy	1200	1100	34
Latvia	300	500	4
Lithuania	300	400	3
Luxembourg	150	100	0.5
Malta	40	50	0.1
Netherlands	350	300	3
Poland	700	800	15
Portugal	600	400	6
Slovakia	250	450	3
Slovenia	250	300	2
Spain	940	1100	27
Sweden	1600	650	26
UK	1300	700	23

(July 2009) Lately, in the context of soil data collection through EIONET, an extended set of Reference Grids have been generated for 39 EIONET member countries (including EU-27), with grids clipped along the country border. These grids are available from Country Grids .

10km x 10km Reference Grids

The 25 10km x 10km reference grids for all EU25 countries have been zipped into one file: Grids for single EU25 Countries ETRS_LAEA_10k (3MB)

Other Reference Grids

For the convenience of and reference to the user, also the following data are available:

• One Single 10km x 10km reference grid covering all EU25 countries : grid_eu25_etrs_laea_10k
• One Single 100km x 100km reference grid covering all EU25 countries : grid_eu25_etrs_laea_100k
• A shapefile containing countries of Eurasia : Eurasia_countries
• Examples of Regional Reference Grids : Alpine Reference Grids (in the context of the Ecalp Project)
• Examples of grids aligned with the Reference Grids:
  • ESDBv2 Raster Library - 10km x 10km (ETRS_LAEA version)
  • Pesera Data (European Soil Erosion Data)
  • Organic Carbon Data
• Reference Grids of 1kmx1km for the Italian Regions in the context of SIAS project