Habitat map

Pursuant to Article 57, paragraph 1 of the Nature Protection Act, "Habitat types shall be documented on a habitat map..." Pursuant to Article 123, management plans for natural resources shall contain a cartographic overview of the habitat types within. With this, habitat types become a mandatory part of these documents, to which certain measures and conditions of nature protection are bound.

For the purpose of ensuring habitat maps as a fundamental foundation for the development of physical planning documents and natural resource management plans, in 2002 the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning ordered the development of a GIS database on the distribution of habitat types on Croatian territory as part of the project entitled Habitat Mapping.

The project was carried out by the OIKON Institute for Applied Ecology, and was delivered to the Ministry of Culture in April 2004. The database was taken over by the State Institute for Nature Protection as the expert institution for nature protection competent for the maintenance and regular updating of the database.

The habitat map is a GIS database on the distribution of individual habitat types in Croatia. The map is built in a scale of 1:100,000, with a minimum mapping unit of 9 hectares. Linear habitats (minimum length of 300 m) are also mapped. Localities with habitats represented in small areas are depicted as points. Habitats throughout the Croatian territory, include the sea, were mapped. The primary mapping method was analysis of Landsat ETM+ satellite images, in combination with other data sources (air photos, literature data) and field work. The mapping of marine habitats is indicative, and was obtained using spatial modelling techniques.

With regard to the complexity of the base, the limited scale (1:100,000) and the partial imprecision stemming from the methodological limitations, in the sense of the Act, use of the data from the Habitat Map still require interpretation in addition to the cartographic map, especially if the data are used as a foundation for the development of physical plans or natural resource management plans.

The Ordinance on habitat types, habitat map, threatened and rare habitat types and measures for conserving habitat types NN 7/06 , NN 119/09, and its amendments, prescribe that the Institute issues certified cartographic overviews of the habitat type for a given area with interpretation upon written request.

The website of the Institute features a map overview that can be viewed and, depending on the development of the Nature Protection Information System, in time the public will have access to and be able to search the database online.