Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi has completed an ambitious habitat mapping project that will help improve biodiversity, urban planning, crisis management and food security.
The database of the multi-million dollar project, freely available on www.enviroportal.ead.ae, will help academics, developers, town planners and crisis managers. The data can be accessed on iPad and Android phones through the ‘Beatty’ app, which can be downloaded from Apple’s Appstore now and on other platforms shortly.
“As Abu Dhabi emirate continues to follow sustainable development principles, the habitat database will enable better urban and conservation planning. The habitat map will also serve as an invaluable tool while responding to emergencies, such as oil spills, and help responders identify environmentally sensitive areas that are in need of immediate protection,” Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary-General of the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD), said.
“This project supports the UAE government efforts to fulfil its commitment for the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) to ensure a minimum of 17 per cent of terrestrial habitats and 10 per cent of marine habitats are protected and conserved by 2020,” she said at a ceremony to launch the project on Monday.
The satellite-based mapping project completed in 18 months has mapped terrestrial and marine habitats, land use and land cover for the emirate. It has accurately documented the flora and fauna in the entire emirate in 59,640 square kilometres of terrestrial environment and 28,220 square kilometres of marine environment. The data will be updated every two years.
Abu Dhabi has a rich biodiversity with 793 terrestrial and marine animal species, of which 46 are threatened. Of 414 plant species in the emirate, nine are threatened, according to the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi 2012 report.
The officials said this is possibly the largest and most detailed delineation of habitats in the world. Advanced image-processing techniques, together with validation through field surveys, have resulted in data accuracy exceeding 90 per cent in the land and 75 per cent in marine areas. Protected area delineation, environmental permitting, land use and conservation planning, quantifying ecosystem services, estimating blue carbon, detecting land degradation and habitat loss, etc, are some of the areas where the mapping is being used.
The maps can also support food security initiatives by helping identify fertile land with more groundwater where new farms can be developed. EAD can utilise its network of around 1,100 wells to monitor available groundwater for this purpose.
The habitat maps help quantify desertification and exactly identify the affected areas, which help formulate preventive measures such as building natural fencing and controlling overgrazing
Habitat mapping allows for comparisons of ecosystems that have been successfully preserved, gained or lost.
