*2.2. Materials*

In the presented study, the Corine Land Cover (CLC) database from 2018, Chief Geodesy and Cartography Office (GUGiK), and OpenGeodata of Nordrhein-West walen data were used. The analyses were conducted using the MapInfo Pro 17.0.

It must be emphasized that studies relying on CLC data have certain limitations, such as the detailed nature of the input data and a high degree of generalization. The CLC is a far more useful resource for small-scale studies, but it is a less reliable tool for analyses conducted on a larger scale [47].

The CLC has its own nomenclature that is consistent over the databases from different years and for the whole area. The nomenclature consists of 3 hierarchical levels, which are called standard levels. There are five main classes of land cover (level 1 and 2):


Different land-use types within each of the above groups are specified at the second and third levels of the inventory. In the presented study, level 3 was chosen (see Table 2 in Section 2.3). The CLC uses a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) of 25 hectares (ha) for areal phenomena and a minimum width of 100 m for linear phenomena. The CLC vector layers were downloaded from the Pan-European datasets of Copernicus Land Monitoring Services.


**Table 2.** The values of the degree of belonging of land cover to the urban landscape.
