Habitats

Most of the indicators of Biodiversity.fi have been grouped according to the main habitat types present in Finland. To a large extent, the number and definition of these habitat types follows the one used used in the red-list assessments of Finnish species and habitat types from 2000 and 2008 respectively. Starting from the largest in area and ending with smallest, the nine main habitat types are: forests, mires, Baltic Sea, inland waters, farmlands, alpine habitats, urban areas, shores and rocky and esker habitats.

While the delineation of some habitat types may be considered quite straightforward (e.g. Baltic Sea, farmlands) some difficulties relate to all habitats. In some cases the delineation may be almost arbitrary and represents a human agreement rather than any clear-cut line in nature. Such, for example, is the definition of forests and mires.

Updated (14.10.2014)