A biotope landscape model for prediction of semi-natural vegetation in Denmark

The work presented is part of a research effort, addressing the development of biological concepts for assessing the quality of Danish terrestrial bio topes. The aim of the study has been to develop a spatial model describing impacts of agricultural land use on natural and semi-natural terrestrial bi otopes. Approaches in other countries fall into two main categories, broad scale, nation-wide models and detailed models across minor study areas. In this paper, we present an operational model capable of working at sufficien t detail to assess impacts in spatial detail while at the same time coverin g a broader region. Based upon a classification of plant communities found within natural and semi-natural areas in Denmark a Biotope Landscape Model was developed and implemented into a geographic information system (GIS). T he work included compilation of an Ecotope Map as a basis for the predictio n of spatial distribution of the vegetation at three aggregation levels - 1 0 main types, 31 sub types and 130 plant communities. For model implementat ion, a large project area was chosen covering a range of characteristic lan dscapes in Denmark. Testing against vegetation samples shows convincing pre dictions for main types (87% correct) and sub types (59%), while prediction s at plant community level was found unreliable (28%). Evaluation results i ndicate the potentials of GIS-based ecological models as tools in landscape planning. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.