A grid-based map for the biogeographical regions of Europe

Cervellini, Marco; Zannini, Piero; Di Musciano, Michele; Fattorini, Simone; Jim�nez-Alfaro, Borja; Rocchini, Duccio; Field, Richard; Vetaas, Ole R.; Irl, Severin D.H.; Beierkuhnlein, Carl; Hoffmann, Samuel; Fischer, Jan Christopher; Casella, Laura; Angelini, Pierangela; Genovesi, Piero; Nascimbene, Juri; Chiarucci, Alessandro

Abstract

© Pensoft Publishers. Background Biogeographical units are widely adopted in ecological research and nature conservation management, even though biogeographical regionalisation is still under scientific debate. The European Environment Agency provided an official map of the European Biogeographical Regions (EBRs), which contains the official boundaries used in the Habitats and Birds Directives. However, these boundaries bisect cells in the official EU 10 km x 10 km grid used for many purposes, including reporting species and habitat data, meaning that 6881 cells overlap two or more regions. Therefore, superimposing the EBRs vector map over the grid creates ambiguities in associating some cells with European Biogeographical Regions. New information To provide an operational tool to unambiguously define the boundaries of the eleven European Biogeographical Regions, we provide a specifically developed raster map of Grid-Based European Biogeographical Regions (GB-EBRs). In this new map, the borders of the EBRs are reshaped to coherently match the standard European 10 km x 10 km grid imposed for reporting tasks by Article 17 of the Habitats Directive and used for many other datasets. We assign each cell to the EBR with the largest area within the cell.

Citation

Cervellini, M., Zannini, P., Di Musciano, M., Fattorini, S., Jiménez-Alfaro, B., Rocchini, D., …Chiarucci, A. (2020). A grid-based map for the biogeographical regions of Europe. Biodiversity Data Journal, 8, Article e53720. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e53720

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 17, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jun 30, 2020
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2020
• Deposit Date: Aug 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 24, 2020
• Journal: Biodiversity Data Journal
• Electronic ISSN: 1314-2828
• Publisher: Pensoft Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Article Number: e53720
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e53720
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4831928
• Publisher URL: https://bdj.pensoft.net/article/53720/instance/5749535/