EcoChange Task 01.02.03: Refined Classifications; desaggregation of CORINE land cover into ecological relevant classes

The major objective here was to develop a refinement of land cover information into relevant ecological classes. This task can be considered as part II of the deliverable report D01.02.02. The modeling of the spatial distribution of habitats focussed especially on the forest and grassland ecosystems, since they are the major focus of the ECOCHANGE project. Much effort was made on the establishment of the knowledge rules for the relationship between CORINE land cover classes (CEC, 1994; Bossard et al, 2000; Büttner et al, 2004) and the Annex 1 Habitats (European Commission, 2007). The knowledge rules were largly based on the ecological knowledge of Dr R.G.H. Bunce who was responsible for that specific part. Knowledge rules can be improved in the future by more in-depth exploitation of the in-situ data and use of more European expert knowledge which will definitely improved the developed spatial models, although some habitats are so locally distributed or weakly described that their spatial identification identification at the European scale is hardly possible.

The link address is: http://www.synbiosys.alterra.nl/ecochange/singleclasses.aspx