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Pierre Devillers, Jean Devillers-Terschuren and Charles Vander Linden. 1996. Palaearctic Habitats. PHYSIS Data Base. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Last updated 1999.
This section of the PHYSIS database of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences offers a framework to organise the habitats of the Palaearctic realm in an ordered sequence, according to the same methodology as that used for the CORINE Biotopes Habitats of the European Community typology (Devillers et al., 1991), the Council of Europe’s A classification of Palaearctic habitats (Devillers and Devillers-Terschuren, 1996), and the RBINS’s, European Community-sponsored, Habitats of South America (Devillers and Devillers-Terschuren, 1996). The geographical area covered by the data base encompasses northern Eurasia and North Africa south to the southern limits of Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, China and Japan, together with adjacent parts of the Arctic Ocean, of the eastern temperate and boreal Atlantic, of the western temperate and boreal Pacific, of the northern tropical Atlantic and Indo-Pacific, of the Red Sea. The entire Arabian peninsula, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic, Greenland, Iceland, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, Socotra, the China Sea Islands, Taiwan, the Bonin, Volcano and Marcus islands and the Commander Islands are included.
Within this area, three concentric regions can be distinguished. For the European Community, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, successive drafts of the list have been scrutinised and efforts have been made to make it as complete as possible. For the area comprised within the outer borders of the Member States of the Council of Europe in its configuration of 1993, as well as for the coastal strips of states that border the Mediterranean Sea, subdivision of units has been carried out to a level as fine as possible, on the basis of readily available information. Its finalisation will, however, require further investigation and consultation. For the area outside these outer limits, units have been subdivided only to the extent necessary to ensure consistency of equal or further subdivision inside the 1993 Council of Europe area. Thus, for these units, a place in the structure has been secured but subdivision is usually still insufficient, and often greatly so.
World compatibility and homogeneity of treatment were insured by anchoring the main structure to three sets of references:
- a set of complete, single-source, summaries of the world's habitats, relevant to coherence of choices in habitat placement within the hierarchy, primarily Walter and Breckle (1986, 1991) Ökologie der Erde, Rieley and Page (1990) Ecology of plant communities, Huetz de Lemps (1994) Les paysages végétaux du globe, Archibold (1995) Ecology of world vegetation;
- a series of world-scale treatments of broad habitat types, ensuring homogeneity of treatment on the plane of a given upper-order habitat unit, primarily the series Ecosystems of the world, edited by D.W Goodall, and equivalent works for habitat groups not yet treated in the series, notably taken from the series Handbook of vegetation science, edited by H. Lieth (wetlands), or Springer-Verlag, Ecological studies (montane forests);
- continent-wide or sub-continent-wide descriptions of vegetation and habitats ensuring homogeneity along the other geographical plane; most relevant to the Mediterranean basin are Knapp (1973) Die Vegetation von Afrika, Zohary (1973) Geographical foundations of the Middle East, Horvat et al. (1974) Vegetation Südosteuropas, Peinado Lorca and Rivas-Martinez (1987) La vegetation de Espana
Acknowledgements
The interest and encouragement, throughout the long development of the Palaearctic habitat typology project of Michel Cornaert, Eladio Fernández Galiano, Ulla Pinborg, Jean-Pierre Ribaut, Barry K. Wyatt, Dorian Moss, Marc Roekaerts, José Vasconcelos, Mircea Oltean, were fundamental to its undertaking and to all aspects of its elaboration.
Numerous other scientists volunteered their knowledge and expertise to the original Union project, either as members of the CORINE-Biotopes team or as outside experts. The contributions of D. Cabot, S. ten Houte de Lange, H. Koeppel, F. de Beaufort, R. Briggs, D. Richard, M. Pavan, E. Wymer, G. Mavrommatis, C. Morillo Fernandez, G. Bechet, R. Uhel, D. Washer, K. Hiscock, D. W. Connor, C. O'Criodain, J. Hopkins, A. Machado, Salomez, Jonglet, Cross, Curtis, Ryan, Speight, P. Goriup, Brown, E. Bezzel, P. Evans, M. O. Hill, J. Duvigneaud and, particularly, A. Noirfalise, were very important.
The extension of the list to Central and Northern Europe benefited from the outstanding cooperation of A. Dyduch-Falniovska, R. Kazmierezak, E. Kovacs-Lang, T. Patkai, G. Fekete, M. Ruzicka, P. Elias, N. Donita, G. Coldea, M. Oltean, T. Chifu, G. Spiridonov, T. Meshinev, I. Apostolova, D. Peev, V. Velshev, P. Vassilev, A. Petrova, R. Hardalova, N. Videnova, T. Söderman, M. Paar, U. Bohn, E. Evrard, L. Påhlsson, U. Pinborg.
Members of the Section of Conservation Biology t of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences who participated in the construction of the Palaearctic PHYSIS data base include M.-O. Beudels, R. C. Beudels-Jamar, B. Chiwy, C. Delforge-Leguerrier, A. Devillers, M. N. de Visscher, M. Fagnant, A. Flausch, P. Goffart, J.-P. Jacob, C. Kerwyn, R.-M. Lafontaine, Y. Laurent, J.-P. Ledant, G. H. Parent, M.-d.-N. de Bellefroid, A. M. Vander Linden, D. Vangeluwe.
Development of the Palaearctic habitats classification was supported by financial contributions of the Kingdom of Belgium, of the Commission of the European Communities and of the Council of Europe.
To consult the Palaearctic base click on the left button below; once the opening page of the base presentation is reached, browsing through the hierarchy is achieved via the book icon in the upper left corner, a search function and a complete list of references are offered through buttons in the left column. To consult regional extracts click on the centre button below; to access information on habitat identification keys click on the right button. To obtain further information on the PHYSIS methodology click on the left button at the bottom of the page. To return to the PHYSIS presentation page click on the centre button. To return to the home page of the Section of Conservation Biology click on the right button.
Introductory text and HTML document prepared by Pierre Devillers and Jean Devillers-Terschuren. Photographs Jean Devillers-Terschuren & Pierre Devillers. |
