Biotope Diversity

The Biotope Diversity team builds knowledge and understanding of the state and trends of habitats and other biotopes and vegetation in order to support appropriate Natura 2000, biotope and site-based policies. Together with colleagues from other teams, we take care of the six-yearly analysis of the state of Natura 2000 habitats (and report it to the EU) and the preparation and evaluation of the Regional Conservation Objectives for those habitats.

The Biological Valuation Map and the Natura 2000 Habitats Map are outputs available to the general public. The degree of development of the habitats is monitored in a monitoring network  representative of Flanders. In order to carry out these tasks, we design assessment tools, monitoring networks and (mapping) methods together with colleagues from other teams. In order to increase the efficiency of the fieldwork, the group is investigating whether remote sensing can be implemented.

The Flemish vegetation database INBOVEG is managed by this team and the analyses of the data contained in it are also part of the tasks. The aim of this database is to collect and centrally store as much vegetation data as possible, which until recently was scattered over various databases and applications. This allows more users to access this data through a web application allowing both input and consultation.