watersurfaces_hab: a map of standing water habitat types and regionally important biotopes in Flanders

This map is a combination of the standardized habitat map of Flanders (version habitatmap_stdized_2025_v1) and the watersurface map of Flanders (version watersurfaces_2024). It contains standing water Natura 2000 habitat types (2190_a and 31xx) and regionally important biotopes (rbbah) in Flanders.

The polygons with 2190_a habitat (dune slack ponds) are generated by selecting all watersurface polygons that overlap with dune habitat polygons (21xx) of the standardized habitat map.

For each of the other aquatic habitat types (31xx and rbbah) we select the watersurface polygons that overlap with the selected habitat type polygons of the standardized habitat map. We also select polygons of the standardized habitat map that contain standing water types but do not overlap with polygons of the watersurface map.

The watersurfaces_hab.gpkg file is a GeoPackage that contains:

• watersurfaces_hab_polygons: a spatial layer with the selected polygons that contain standing water habitat types or regionally important biotopes. Attributes:

  • polygon_id

  • polygon_id_ws: id for the polygon in the watersurfaces data source

  • polygon_id_habitatmap: id's of all overlapping polygons of habitatmap_stdized that contain standing water habitat. The different id's are separated by '+'.

  • description_orig: descriptions of all overlapping polygons of habitatmap_stdized that contain standing water habitat. The different descriptions are separated by '+'.

  • year_assessment: the year when the types in the polygon have been assessed

  • method_assessment: the method used to assess the types in the polygon
    
    

• watersurfaces_hab_types: a table with information on standing water habitat types and regionally important biotopes in each watersurface polygon. Attributes:

  • polygon_id

  • type: habitat or RIB type

  • certain: TRUE when the type is certain and FALSE when the type is uncertain

  • code_orig: original type code in the raw data source 'habitatmap'

The R-code for creating the watersurfaces_hab data source can be found in the GitHub repository 'n2khab-preprocessing' at commit 6a0f3ca.

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