Scholarly record

HABITATS OF CALIMANI NATIONAL PARK- CORROBORATING DATASETS FROM FOREST MANAGEMENT PLANS AND ORTHOPHOTOPLANS FOR AN EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF BIODIVERSITY

E. Cenusa

Abstract

Nature 2000 is a protected-areas network implemented in Europe as a result of this community concerns about use of biodiversity and the quality of the environment. Every EU state member had to designate Nature 2000 sites in order to preserve the habitats and species listed in Habitats and Birds Directives. Romania faced this challenge by completing this process in a very short period, based on the literature and field observations gathered by scientists and other stakeholders in the field of biodiversity. For Calimani National Park, the task for habitats was completed using the forest management plans, a tool that offered data on soils, forest types and plant communities according to the Romanian classifications, for each forest management unit. This data, corroborated with GIS software, produced maps and showed the percentage of land covered by each Nature 2000 forest habitat existing in the park. In this way, about 60\% of the protected area was mapped. For the rest, consisting of alpine meadows, bushes and shrubs, only estimated data was available. The goal of this research was to merge data and maps offered by the forest management plans with the maps obtained using GIS software and orthophotoplans, in order to get an efficient tool for biodiversity management for the entire surface of Calimani National Park. For the first dataset, twelve ecosystem types, which correspond to ten habitats from the Romanian classification, were obtained. These last ones have been converted to four habitat types from the EU Habitats Directive list. For the second dataset, the amount of data was more consistent due to the images offered by 1:5000 scale ortophotoplans. They have been mapped, not only habitats that included Juniperus nana and Pinus mugo bushes, shrubs with Rhododendron and Vaccinium species, coniferous forests with Picea abies, mixed forests and alpine and sub-alpine meadows, streams, but also roads, disturbed areas, a sulfur quarry and forest clear-cuts . More accurate values for the size of each habitat type have been obtained, and together with the forest types, smaller size habitats were added to the previous map. This tool, together with the field visits, will contribute to an efficient management of park’s natural heritage. Follow-up researches will include size corrections based on the data gathered in the field and a sampling and monitoring network for each habitat type.

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