Standardized Natura 2000 habitat map of Flanders

The  habitatmap_stdized.gpkg file is a processed version of the Natura 2000 habitat map of Flanders (De Saeger et al., 2018). This file is used as basis for designing monitoring schemes in Flanders.   

In the original habitat map, every polygon can consist of maximum 5 different vegetation types. This information is stored in the columns  HAB1, HAB2,..., HAB5 of the attribute table. The fraction of each vegetation type within the polygons is stored in the columns PHAB1, PHAB2, ..., PHAB5. The different parts of the polygons are called 'patches'.

The processed habitatmap_stdized.gpkg file is a GeoPackage that contains:

• habitatmap_polygons: a spatial layer with every habitat map polygon that contains a Natura 2000 habitat or regional important biotope (RIB) type.
• habitatmap_patches: a table in which every row corresponds with one patch.

The processing of the habitatmap_patches table included following steps:

• A new variable was created to provide the patch number (1 to 5): patch_id.
• For some patches the vegetation type is uncertain, and the vegetation code in the raw habitatmap data source consists of 2 or 3 possible types, separated with a ','. The different possible vegetation types are split up and one row is created for each of them. The variable certain will be FALSE if a patch consists of 2 or 3 possible vegetation types, and TRUE if only one vegetation type is provided.

The R-code for creating the habitatmap_stdized data source can be found in the GitHub repository 'n2khab-preprocessing' at commit ecadaf54d4.

A reading function to return the data source in a standardized way into the R environment is provided by the R-package n2khab.