A WEB GIS FOR THE ITALIAN ECOLOGICAL NETWORK
Welcome to the Web GIS of the Italian Ecological Network (Rete Ecologica Nazionale, REN). This site has been created and is mainteined by GISBAU, the Conservation GIS laboratory of the Animal and Human Biology Department, Università di Roma La Sapienza. It has been funded by the Direction for Nature Protection, Italian Ministery of Environment. The site contains a search engine that generates lists of species potentially present on the ground, based on the habitat suitability models developed for the Italian Ecological Network.
DISCLAIMER: The data contained in this site are not based on species checklists but on distribution models. These have been built inside known geographic ranges of species based on habitat suitability, and ground-truthed (see Boitani et al. 2002 for a detailed description of the methodology, in Italian). Therefore these lists should be exclusively considered as estimates of potential presence.
SEARCH TOOLS AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE
Two types of search are available: by point localities and inside protected areas. The former returns the list of species whose geographic ranges intersect the 300-m grid cell where the selected point lays. The habitat suitability of the selected cell for each species present is given on a four-level rank, based on the habitat suitability models built for the Italian Ecological Network. Since the original models have a 100-m resolution, here is returned the maximum suitability value among the nine available in the 300-m cell. The search inside protected areas returns the list of species whose geographic ranges intersect the protected area selected on screen. For each species, the area (in km²) occupied by each of the four suitability levels is given. In addition, the entire area of the reserve is given.
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE SITE
Click the SEARCH SPECIES button to access the geographic search page. Clicking on the ITALIAN VERTEBRATES DATABANK banner allows to come back to the home page. The initial geographic view displays a physical map of Italy, with regional borders in red. Zooming in, the geographic layers change to facilitate navigation: the physical map is replaced by a 1:1.000.000 map (Istituto Geografico Militare, IGM), and regional boundaries are replaced by province boundaries (in orange). When a serch inside proteced areas is performed, the protected area names appear at high zoom level. PLEASE NOTE: the resolution of the IGM map is much coarser than that of regional, province and protected area boundaries. Therefore the IGM map is only intended to facilitate navigation and does not provide exact coordinates of points. These are available on the status bar at the bottom of the browser window (in UTM32 WGS84 coordinate system).
The toolbar on the right side of the window allows to zoom, navigate, and search the map:- The four ARROWS enable panning (only available if map is zoomed in)
- The round button with a HOME inside resets the view to default
- ZOOM+: Magnifies the map of a fixed factor
- ZOOM-: Reduces the map in size of a fixed factor
- BOXED ZOOM: Allows the selection of the zoom-in area: 1. click on the BOXED ZOOM button; 2. click and release on one of the vertices of the rectangle to be zoomed; 3. click and release on the opposite vertex
- Use the navigation buttons of your Internert browser to navigate back and forth between views
- Search species BY POINT LOCALITY: Select the option BY POINT LOCALITY (it is selected by defalut). Zoom in and navigate to the point of interest, then left-click on the map. The message RETRIEVING DATA confirms that the system is performing your search. Searching by point localities is more time-expensive than searching inside protected areas, and may require up to one minute on a fast DSL connection in peak times
- Search species IN PROTECTED AREA: Select the option IN PROTECTED AREA, select the type of protected area desired from the pull-down menu, and click REFRESH MAP. Zoom in and navigate to the point of interest, then left-click inside the protected area. The message RETRIEVING DATA confirms that the system is performing your search. This should take a few seconds
- SORT RESULTS BY SYSTEMATIC ORDER (the default)
- SORT RESULTS BY HABITAT SUITABILITY (not available for results of search in protected areas)
- Print the list of species using the menu of your Internet browser
- View the report on habitat relationships of a species by clicking on its scientific name
- Save a zip file with the reports on habitat relationships of all species displayed by clicking DOWNLOAD ALL
CREDITS
