Legend Units
Some of the units only reflect information about the land use (arable land, urban areas, etc) but most of them describe vegetation types (dry heath, wet oligotrophic grassland, etc) often at the level of alliances (e.g. Filipendulion, Nympheion) but also at the level of vegetation associations (e.g. Ericetum tetralicis, Fago-Quercetum). It is not uncommon in our landscape that natural vegetations are forced back to small relicts due to habitat fragmentation and habitat loss. A specific set of codes describes these smaller landscape elements (rows of trees, ponds, sunken roads, etc), if possible together with their vegetation composition.
The value of each legend unit is fixed and determined by a number of ecological criteria: rarity of the biotope, presence or absence of certain species, biodiversity of the biotope, vulnerability and replaceability of the biotope.
Frequently, parcels contain vegetations and elements with different values (e.g. species-poor grassland with rows of trees). A mixed valuation is then assigned to that area (shaded green).
Because valuation is largely based on plant species and vegetations we add a red shading for areas of faunistic importance. This importance is determined by the occurrence of important populations of one or more RED LIST species of mammals, breeding birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, dragonflies or butterflies. Also, important numbers of wintering water birds or geese are taken into account.