Nicola Arndt und Matthias Pohl - Neobiota

5.2 Recommendations for future applications
European data on the (potential) natural vegetation offer a wide range of applications in the field of
landscape mapping and assessment at the European level. However, the review of existing national
and international approaches have also demonstrated, that the methodological opportunities and
limitations of natural vegetation data must be well understood if policy objectives and use needs shall
be met. The discussion of concepts and approaches implies that the requirements for developing a
landscape typology differ quite clearly from those for landscape assessments. The following
recommendations for future applications of natural vegetation data are hence divided into two
sections:
European landscape typology and mapping
� Information on the global and European distribution and character of vegetation has always been
one of the priority data sources for the identification of biogeographic entities – may these be lifeform
units, biomes or ecological regions. As such, vegetation data contributes substantially
towards providing an umbrella-type set of area systems where landscape units can be associated
with or can geographically be ‘nested’ in;
� Especially in those European regions where human land use has not altered the vegetation in
substantial ways, e.g. in the arctic, boreal, alpine or other mountain regions, vegetation units at the
level of communities and their geographic variants provide an extremely helpful tool for
subdividing larger landscapes into ecologically homogenous subunits;
� Data on the natural vegetation provides important information when building the hierarchical main
structure of a landscape typology and when characterising the different levels in terms of the
biological potential.
� Natural vegetation can provide indicative information on semi-natural habitats and their associated
traditional production schemes, and hence map out existing and potential areas of agricultural
landscapes – if correctly interpreted.
� Because natural vegetation data can be very different – especially in Europe – from the real
vegetation as defined by contemporary land use and resource management, there is only limited
use for the purpose of identifying geographical cultural landscape units (at the lower level of the
hierarchy) that are policy-relevant, recognisable and socio-economically accepted.
European landscape assessment and monitoring
� Information on the natural vegetation of Europe – especially with a level of detail and geographic
differentiation as documented in the work by BOHN et al. (2000), is of outmost relevance for
future landscape assessment and monitoring at the European level as it provides the opportunity to
be used for assessing the actual vegetation and land use within a given landscape unit.
� Through the further development and systematic application of the ‘hemerobie’ concept it will be
possible to intrumentalise natural vegetation data as a reference base for assessing the humancultural
influence on the one hand and the role of abiotic factors on the other hand. Such
assessments can provide valuable information for measuring the carrying capacity of current
ecosystems and for understanding the driving force – pressure – state relations in certain
environmental settings.
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