Hellenic Cadastre
“The Hellenic Cadastre is proud to announce the successful completion of the National Forest Map Program. Forest map development and ratification represents an excellent example of collaboration across State agencies in Greece, including wide public awareness and participation. The high-accuracy geospatial data that were produced during the process have enabled the State authorities to register forest public lands in the cadastre and secure land tenure in those areas.”
Stylianos Sakaretsios
President of the Board of Directors, Hellenic Cadastre
The largest investment in the forest sector for the last two decades in Greece has contributed to the development of the cadastre and is supporting sustainable development in the country.
Co-funded by the EU, the Forest Map program provides nationwide data on forest cover and forest changes across two periods: 1945 and 2000-2022.
Forest mapping deals with forestlands boundaries and their associated characterisation as ‘forest’ or ‘non forest’. This relates to claims on land use and property rights by the State against individuals and vice versa.
Digital 1:5.000 scale Forest Maps depict effectively forest/non-forest extent, as well as the status to protect forestlands. They also help in identifying and registering State property rights on forestlands through cadastre, and provide geospatial data to public administration and private sector for land management and planning.
Forest Map development and ratification in Greece is based on a comprehensive procedure that uses a wide variety of data to produce the final outcome. Such data include orthophotomaps of the 1945 and recent – after the year 2000 – periods, on-site inspections and surveys, zoning data, land consolidation data, cadastral maps, judicial decisions, and administrative decisions.
To raise public awareness and participation, the Hellenic Cadastre has developed a web-based geospatial platform for Forest Map viewing. This enables users to search by geographic coordinates, parcel-id, and navigation, and retrieve land information per polygon or parcel. The platform provides forms and geospatial tools for any interested entity to compile georeferenced claims against content of the Forest Map. Users pay the respective fee per claim and receive a certificate that documents their claim along with the respective Forest Map extract.
In the absence of a Forest Registry in Greece, the Hellenic Cadastre launched the National Forest Map Program in 1998. Since cadastre deals with registration of all land properties in Greece and forestlands cover approximately 60% of the area of the country, such mapping is a crucial factor for the successful development of the cadastre.
Benefits
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Enables effective forestlands protection where geospatial demarcation has never been implemented.
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Provides site-specific geospatial data and information regarding forestlands to the public and private sector.
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Improves spatially-enabled land administration and management of State-owned forestlands.
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Provides the basis for State property declaration over forestlands and registration in the cadastre.
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Allows legitimacy control of property rights claims over forestlands according to the law.
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Accelerates cadastre development.
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Provides the basis for the development of National Forest Inventory and land use/land cover mapping.
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Raises employment rates of foresters, surveyors, lawyers, and other professionals.
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Promotes spatial planning and sustainable development (economic, social and environmental).