Generalized habitat map of Serbia

Abstract

The generalized habitat map of Serbia is one of the products of the project carried out for the needs of the Institute for Nature Protection of Serbia by the Faculty of Biology University of Belgrade in cooperation with the geomatics company MapSoft d.o.o. The map was created using an adapted methodology for extracting different habitat types from remote sensing data. To interpret the basic habitat types, the following input datasets were used: Sentinel-2 satellite data, EU-DEM terrain elevation data, Basic land cover map, Copernicus pan-European high resolution layers, Open Street Map data, pedological and geological map of Serbia, and numerous training data. The map was created by integrating the rasters of each habitat type into a single raster, separating additional habitat subtypes by crossing them with additional sources (geologic and pedological map, basic land cover map, etc.). The final results are presented in the form of a spatial raster, with 32 cartographic classes defined based on the typology of habitats according to the Rulebook on Habitats of Serbia. In addition, manual vectorization of several other habitat types (springs - 37,284 objects, caves - 499 objects, waterfalls - 109 objects) was performed, and these results are provided in the form of vector point entities.