Comparison of extent and transformation of South Africa's woodland biome from two national databases

THE RECENT COMPLETION OF THE SOUTH African National Land-Cover Database and the Vegetation Map of South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, allows for the first time a comparison to be made on a national scale between the current and potential distribution of 'natural' vegetation resources. This article compares the distribution and location of woodland-type vegetation categori es defined within the National Land-Cover data and the equivalent 'Savanna- thicket Biomes' class defined within the Vegetation Map data. Significant d ifferences were found, both in terms of the total areal extent, as well as the actual spatial distribution of these two data sets. These differences a re a measure of the inherent mapping accuracies of each source, but rather an illustration of boundary delineation distinctions that are a result of d ifferent data sources, mapping objectives and information classes, that mus t be noted when comparing two essentially similar information sets.