EU Grassland Condition Records — Grassland Watch

Keyless. Pay per record. Europe's satellite-monitored grassland condition, site by site, month by month.

This actor turns the European Commission EU Grassland Watch into clean, per-observation records — the satellite-derived monitoring of grassland condition across the EU's Natura 2000 network. Each run reads the Commission's keyless data-query API for the country you choose and delivers one row per site / month / variable observation: the site code, the land-cover unit, the year and month, the measured variable and its value, and the units. Site / unit / month / variable observation grain, structured for engineering use, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, with no personal data of any kind.

What this is, in one paragraph

EU Grassland Watch monitors the condition of protected grasslands using satellite data, and the European Commission publishes the observations. This actor reads that dataset and flattens each observation into a single analysis-ready record: the site code (a protected-area identifier), the land-cover unit id, the year and month of observation, the monitored variable, the observed value, and the units. Values are carried verbatim — the measurement is exactly as published, including zero values. It is the grassland-condition monitoring layer of Europe's protected-area network. You are billed only for records actually delivered.

Who buys this and for what job

• Environmental-monitoring, conservation, and land-use teams tracking grassland condition across protected sites over time.
• Agri-environment and CAP-compliance products studying grassland-condition indicators by site and season.
• Remote-sensing and ESG-analytics teams joining grassland observations to protected-area and habitat datasets.
• Data engineers who want the Grassland Watch observations as clean rows without paging a per-country API by hand.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — free commercial reuse

One licence rider travels on every record. European Commission EU Grassland Watch data is available for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence per the Commission's legal notice — free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution to the European Commission. That attribution travels on every record. One honest caveat rides too: these are satellite-derived monitoring observations, not a compliance or land-management determination.

Observation grain — no person data

The unit of every record is a site / month / variable observation — a measurement, never a person. The dataset carries no natural-person fields, and this actor emits none, with a person-key guard as a pure backstop. Site codes, unit ids, variables, values, and units are the entire payload.

A required partition — this is a multi-million-row dataset per country

EU Grassland Watch is published as one observation table per country, and each is a MONSTER — Germany alone is over 3.7 million rows. This actor therefore requires a partition: every run must set a countryCode (one of the 27 EU Grassland Watch countries). The country selects its own table; there is no unbounded all-EU pull — it is structurally impossible in code. Optional variable and year filters narrow further, and maxRecords is the hard ceiling.

Pricing

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold / Platinum / Diamond
observation_record	$0.05	$0.045	$0.04	$0.0335

Delivered before charged. Blocked runs and empty results cost nothing.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
countryCode	string	—	Required 2-letter country code (one of the 27 EU Grassland Watch countries, e.g. DE, FR, ES).
variable	string	—	Optional. Keep only observations of this variable code (e.g. LWC).
year	integer	—	Optional observation year to filter (e.g. 2016).
maxRecords	integer	500	Ceiling on records delivered and billed.

Output

One JSON object per observation. Real example (values as published):

{
  "record_id": "DE1420301:COP4N2K_2012_3473819:2016:5:LWC",
  "object_id": "618520",
  "site_code": "DE1420301",
  "uid_lcu": "COP4N2K_2012_3473819",
  "country_code": "DE",
  "year": 2016,
  "month": 5,
  "variable": "LWC",
  "value": 0.0,
  "units": "cm*100000",
  "source": "European Commission EU Grassland Watch",
  "licence": "European Commission EU Grassland Watch ... Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 ...",
  "disclaimer": "EU Grassland Watch satellite-derived condition observation records ... carried VERBATIM ...",
  "observed_at": "2026-08-22T00:00:00Z"
}

An unbilled RUN_RECEIPT records the robots check, the country, variable, and year, rows seen and delivered, and whether charged equals delivered.

Field reference

Each record is one observation. Identity: record_id (site + unit + year + month + variable), object_id, site_code, uid_lcu, and country_code. Time: year and month. Measurement: variable, value, and units. Provenance: source, source_url, licence, attribution, disclaimer, and observed_at.

How a run works

A run first re-reads the source host's robots posture from your runtime — the Commission's environmental data-query host — and stops at the door if a Disallow ever covers it. It then pages your country's Grassland Watch observation table, applies your optional variable and year filters, and flattens each observation to one record — carrying the value verbatim, never anything person-shaped — delivered before it is charged, so a blocked or empty run costs you nothing. The actor stops at your maxRecords ceiling and records charge_equals_delivered in the receipt.

Coverage and scope

The dataset spans 27 EU countries, each a separate multi-million-row observation table (Germany alone exceeds 3.7 million rows). A partition is required because of that scale: one country selects its table, and a variable or year narrows to a manageable slice. Because each record carries the site_code, year, month, and variable, a site's condition time series reconstructs by a simple sorted filter.

Working with the observations

The observations are a time series waiting to be assembled, and the identifiers make that mechanical. Every record carries the site_code, uid_lcu, year, month, and variable, so a single filtered pull sorted by year and month reconstructs a site's condition trajectory for a given variable without any cross-table work. The variable field is the lever for comparing indicators — pull one variable across a country to map its spatial pattern, or several variables for one site to profile its condition — and the units travel on every row so a downstream consumer never has to guess a scale. Because the data is published per country and the country is the required partition, a run is always bounded to one national table; combine that with a variable and year and even a MONSTER country becomes a targeted, affordable slice rather than an accidental multi-million-row pull.

Cost guidance

One observation_record per delivered observation: cost = rows delivered × your plan's per-record price. Always scope with countryCode and narrow with variable, year, and maxRecords. 1,000 observations is $50 (Free) / $33.50 (Gold). These are very large per-country tables, so filter and cap deliberately.

Honest limitations

• Monitoring data, not a verdict. These are satellite-derived observations, not a compliance or land-management determination.
• Partition required. Every run must set a countryCode; there is no unbounded all-EU pull.
• As published. Values and units are carried verbatim; this actor reformats, it does not recompute.
• Acknowledge the Commission. The attribution travels on every record.
• No person data of any kind.

Differentiation

This is a net-new category for the NexGenData fleet — no existing fleet actor covers EU grassland-condition monitoring. It is distinct from the fleet's protected-site register (Natura 2000 designations, not condition observations) and from any emissions or water cell. Its specific job is the EU Grassland Watch observation series — satellite-monitored grassland condition, site by site, month by month.

The NexGen Signal family

Part of the NexGen Signal family of pay-per-record data products:

• EU Natura 2000 Site Records — EEA Protected Sites
• EU Waterbody Quality Records — EEA WISE Waterbase
• EU Industrial Emissions Records — EEA IED Facilities
• EU Bathing Water Quality Records — EEA BWD
• EU Nitrate Monitoring Records — EEA WISE Nitrates

Source: European Commission, EU Grassland Watch (apps.data.env.service.ec.europa.eu). Reused under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence per the Commission's legal notice — free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution to the European Commission. Satellite-derived monitoring observations, not a compliance determination; values carried verbatim. Observation grain; no person data of any kind.