期刊名称：GI_FORUM - Journal for Geographic Information Science
电子版ISSN：2308-1708
出版年度：2013
页码：512-515
DOI：10.1553/giscience2013s512
出版社：ÖAW Verlag, Wien
摘要：One of the core European Union environmental policies is the creation and monitoring ofthe Natura 2000 network of protected areas. This network has been explicitly establishedfor the preservation of conservation priority habitat types and species. Still the concept ofhabitat is a key concept for ecologists that remains ill defined and is notoriously hard toquantify and measure. Several classification schemes have been put forward, but theirrelative strengths and weaknesses remain less well examined. In this study we analyzed 8different Natura 2000 sites (3 Greek, 2 Italian, 2 Portuguese, 1 British). Our study sitesreflect a variety of ecosystems, most of them are Mediterranean (7 of the 8) and most ofthem are wetlands (6 of the 8). In each site, we classified habitats according to 4 differentclassification schemes (Annex I of the Habitats Directive, Corine Biotopes, EUNIS andGeneral Habitat categories). Also, we used three other widely used land cover classificationschemes (namely Corine Land Cover, FAO Land Cover Classification System and IGBPDIS scheme). We found that the different schemes produced considerably different valuesof landscape diversity leading even to different ranking of the sites according to theirdiversity. Furthermore, when comparing the landscape composition among sites accordingto the different schemes, they led to different inferences. Our results imply that theclassification scheme used for estimating habitat composition plays an important role.
