QGIS

QGIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) type of software that is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It’s a free software license, which guarantees all users to freely run, study, share and modify the software. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android and supports numerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities. It is available free of charge and you can download it at www.qgis.org.

Read the following instruction to find out more:

Where and how can I download the QGIS software?

Free and open geospatial data

Copernicus Program

Copernicus is a European system for monitoring the Earth. Copernicus consists of a complex set of systems which collects data from multiple sources: earth observation satellites and in situ sensors such as ground stations, airborne and seaborne sensors. It processes these data and provides users with reliable and up-to-date information through a set of services related to environmental and security issues: land, marine, atmosphere, climate change, emergency management and security.

The data provided in the frame of the Copernicus Program, mainly concerns land use and land cover themes. You can find more details below.

• CORINE Land Cover - The CORINE Land Cover (CLC) inventory was initiated in 1985 (reference year 1990). Updates have been produced in 2000 and 2006, and the latest 2012 update is under production. It consists of an inventory of land cover in 44 classes. CLC uses a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 25 hectares (ha) for areal phenomena and a minimum width of 100 m for linear phenomena.
• Urban Atlas - The Urban Atlas is providing pan-European comparable land use and land cover data for Functional Urban Areas (FUA). The Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency. See some instructions to find out more:

1. How can I download Urban Atlas data for my city?
2. How can I add the Urban Atlas data for my city to QGIS? 
3. Get to know more about Urban Atlas

 

• Riparian Zones - Riparian zones represent transitional areas occurring between land and freshwater ecosystems, characterised by distinctive hydrology, soil and biotic conditions and strongly influenced by the water stream. They provide a wide range of riparian functions (e.g. chemical filtration, flood control, bank stabilisation, aquatic life and riparian wildlife support, etc.) and ecosystem services.
• Natura 2000 - Natura 2000 (an EU-wide network of nature protection areas established under the 1992 Habitats Directive) is the centre piece of the EU nature & biodiversity policy. The aim of the network is to assure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats.
• High Resolution Layers - Pan-European High Resolution Layers (HRL) provide information on specific land cover characteristics, and are complementary to land cover / land use mapping such as in the CORINE land cover (CLC) datasets. The HRLs are produced from 20 m resolution satellite imagery through a combination of automatic processing and interactive rule based classification. Five themes have been identified so far, corresponding with the main themes from CLC, i.e. the level of sealed soil (imperviousness), tree cover density and forest type, (semi-) natural grasslands, wetlands and permanent water bodies.

European Environment Agency

You can download a big package of data about Europe’s environment from EEA’s website. The data concerns various themes, i.e. agriculture, air pollution, biodiversity, climate change, coasts and sea, energy, environment and health, environmental scenarios, environmental technology, fisheries, green economy, household consumption, industry, land use, natural resources, noise, soil, specific regions, tourism, transport, waste and material resources, water. This variety of topics causes that you can simply include geospatial data into your lesson’s scenario.

Other sources

• Natural Earth – Natural Earth is a global data’s resource. All themes are available in three levels of detail. For each scale, themes are listed on Cultural, Physical, and Raster category pages;
• Global Elevation Map - GMTED2010 (Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010) is a suite of seven raster data products: minimum elevation, maximum elevation, mean elevation, median elevation, standard deviation of elevation, systematic subsample, and breakline emphasis. The spatial resolution of GMTED2010 ranges from 1 kilometer, 500 meters and 250 meters;
• WorldClim - Free climate data for ecological modeling and GIS;
• International Human Development Indicators - Human development data from around the world in the form of an interactive tool;