EUNIS forest and other wooded land habitat types, distribution based on vegetation plot data - version 1, Nov. 2021

This metadata corresponds to the EUNIS forest and other wooded land habitat types, distribution based on vegetation plot data dataset.

The forest and other wooded land habitat type is the land where the dominant vegetation is, or was until very recently, trees with a canopy cover of at least 10%. It includes temporarily unstocked areas due to clear-cutting as part of a forest management practice or natural disasters which are expected to be regenerated within 5 years but does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use. Trees are defined as woody plants, typically single-stemmed, that can reach a height of at least 5 m at maturity unless stunted by poor climate or soil. Includes Alnus and Populus swamp forest and riverine Salix forest. Excludes Corylus avellana scrub and Salix and Frangula carrs. Excludes lines of trees, coppices, regularly tilled tree nurseries. Excludes stands of climatically-limited dwarf trees (krummholz) < 3m high, such as occur at the arctic or alpine tree limit which are considered scrub (section S) . Excludes tree stands in agricultural production systems, such as fruit tree plantations, olive orchards and agroforestry systems (dehesa and montado) where crops are grown under tree cover - canopy less than 10%, which are listed under sparsely wooded grasslands. Old plantations which have many of the characteristics of natural or semi-natural forests are included, more intensively managed, and less natural, forests are included in vegetated man-made habitats.

The verified forest and other wooded land habitat samples used are derived from the Braun-Blanquet database (http://www.sci.muni.cz/botany/vegsci/braun_blanquet.php?lang=en) which is a centralised database of vegetation plots and comprises copies of national and regional databases using a unified taxonomic reference database. The geographic extent of the distribution data are all European countries except Armenia and Azerbaijan. The dataset is provided both in Geodatabase and Geopackage formats.