El mapa d'hàbitats d'Andorra

(Eng) The Andorran Map of Habitats For the correct management of an area it is essential to have access to an appropriate thematic cartography. This is the only way, when it comes to making decisions that affect that area, that an evaluation can be made consistent with the different existing possibilities. Knowing what types of rocks make up a certain area, what soil types there are and how they are distributed, what the water or snow regime of each slope is, which vegetative communities make up the landscape, locating plants or fauna in need of protection, are some of the questions which these maps can answer. For Andorran plant landscape, there was a very useful map in general terms (Folch i Farràs, 1979), although the scale not allowing for much detail (1:50.000) and several of its aspects being rather out of date made it of little use when it came to direct applications, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph. To make up for this lack, the Biodiversity Centre of the Institute of Andorran Studies embarked on two parallel projects: the Land cover map, presented in the third issue of this magazine (Dalmases et al., 2001), and the map of Habitats, which we present in this issue. In both cases, the aim is to produce detailed maps in a digital format, which would provide for a range of general references and uses as well as making their updating relatively easy. The result of the first project is a map with great mapping detail that classifies the territory in very general units (Andorran vegetation is divided into 7 units). The habitats map, however, has less mapping detail, although enough for territorial planning (1:25 000 scale), but gives much more precise information on environmental aspects as the legend is made up of one hundred units, based on the corresponding plant communities.