Does your land in Portugal have to be cleared?

What the free map doesn’t tell you

• The COS is not the ground. The land-cover map has a minimum mapping unit of 1 ha: a small pine wood next to a house may be classed as farmland, and an abandoned field may already be scrub.
• We can’t tell which buildings are in use. Under DL 82/2021 only buildings used as a home or for an economic activity count; a closed-up house should not create a strip, and the map cannot see that.
• Not every parcel is mapped. Where there is no parcel in BUPi or the cadastre, the map shows the strips but not whose duty they are.
• Standard widths. We use 50, 10 and 100 m. The sub-regional programme may set other widths, and under the old regime those of the municipal plan apply.
• Other people’s strips are not shown. Roads, power lines, gas pipelines and industrial sites have their own strips, cleared by the operators.

Sources, method and limits