Nicola Arndt und Matthias Pohl - Neobiota

An existing land classification map based on 21 available climatic parameters, was also selected to
form the basis for the ecological regions map, because of the great importance of climate in
determining environmental conditions.
The combination of these two digitised maps, together with the deliberate choice to spread the number
of classes from about 50 to 200, are presented as the Digitised Maps of European Ecological Regions
and sub-regions, DMEER. The fact that those maps are digital is crucial, as it allows this information
to be overlayed with all types of spatial data from the natural environment, thus enabling numeric
inventory and statistical analysis.
2 Information Sources
The DMEER maps draw from two primary information sources: for potential natural vegetation the
Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN; BOHN 1995, BOHN et al. 2000) and for topographic and climatic
data, the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE; BUNCE 1995).
Vegetation reflects many physical site factors, such as climate, soil type, elevation, and orientation. It
is also composed of the ecosystem’s primary production and serves as habitat for the animal
community. Vegetation acts as an integrator of many of the physical and biological attributes of an
area, and a vegetation map can be used as a surrogate for ecosystems in conservation evaluations
(SPECHT 1975, AUSTIN 1991). A vegetation map, therefore, provides the foundation for the assessment
of distribution of ecological regions.
The potential natural vegetation map (Figure 1) was produced in Germany by the Institut für
Vegetationskunde, Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BOHN 1995, BOHN et al. 2000/2003) in close
cooperation with other European experts.
This vector map illustrates the distribution of natural dominant plant communities and their
complexes, which are adapted to existing climatic and edaphic conditions, excluding – as far as
possible – human impact. It is divided into 19 physiognomically and ecologically characterised
formations and formation-complexes, which are further differentiated according to floristic, edaphic,
climatic and phyto-geographical criteria. Altogether the legend comprises 698 mapping units, of which
580 were used to produce DMEER.
The BfN map includes the most important features of latitudinal and longitudinal vegetation
regularities, azonal vegetation types and their geographical differentiation as well as edaphic,
geographical and floristical varieties of the natural plant cover. The vegetation of Europe is subdivided
into 19 formation units, which are sorted according to their physiognomic and structural features,
dominant species and floristic composition into lower units.
This map is very complex, with 18,808 polygons covering an area of approximately 285,000,000 km².
The topographic and climatic information was added from the map of European Land Classification as
depicted in Figure 2 and produced by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE), United Kingdom. The
ITE map was considered as an important base over which the potential natural vegetation map would
be superimposed.
3 Methodology
Ecological regions are by definition bound to specific areas. It would be impossible to manage the
multiple layers of information required to characterise an ecological region without a Geographical
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