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Habitat Suitability Modelling

A habitat suitability model attempts to predict areas that have potential for the restoration or re-creation of new habitat, and to quantify the relative suitability of the predicted areas. In Autumn 2024, GiGL mapped the locations in Greater London which could be suitable for the creation of ten priority habitats. These were:

  • Coastal Grazing Marsh
  • Floodplain Grazing Marsh
  • Lowland Calcareous Grassland
  • Lowland Dry Acid Grassland
  • Lowland Heathland
  • Lowland Meadows
  • Lowland Mixed Deciduous Woodland
  • Purple Moor Grass and Rush Pastures
  • Reedbeds
  • Wet Woodland

The methodology was based on the work of Hampshire Biodiversity Information Centre but was tweaked for London.

A full Project Report can be found here. To summarise, the steps involved in generating the habitat suitability maps were as follows:

  1. Division of London into 2500m2 grid cells using the British National Grid coordinate reference system.
  2. Initial screening to remove cells which overlapped areas that are generally not suitable for habitat restoration or re-creation such as urban areas, transport corridors and open water.
  3. Research into the major factors influencing the distribution of each habitat using literature, expert assessment and statistical calculation.
  4. Creation of GIS models which calculated a Suitability Score for each cell using various score lookup tables and the proportion that each of the influencing factors made up within that cell.
  5. Validation of each model by comparing the Suitability Score of cells containing existing habitat of the type being modelled.

An example of what was produced is below. If you are a GiGL SLA partner, then you can access the detailed version of the mapping for your area of interest. Please contact GIS and Data Officer Molly if you would like to know more.

A map of suitable areas for the creation of Lowland Dry Acid Grassland in Greater London, graded from high to low suitability. The most suitable areas are in the South East of London whilst areas of dense urban land and water are deemed unsuitable.

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