Pilot mapping of Galway habitats

Environment Systems along within members of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the Biodiversity Office for County Galway undertook a fieldwork exercise in Counties Galway and Clare as part of a project with the purpose of ‘assessing the transferability of the Welsh habitat mapping approach for an Irish situation’. The pilot study was commissioned by the EPA.

The fieldwork took place between 17-19th of August 2009 focusing on developing our understanding of the complex habitats found within the area. These included the Burren, one of Europe’s largest karst landscapes, as well raised bog environments and turloughs, which are common to this part of Ireland.

The fieldwork exercise was invaluable to Environment Systems     in understanding the context of habitats and landscape features in this part of Ireland and how they can be seen within the satellite data. This in turn has enabled us to produce a high quality draft map of the area which was generated through combining satellite imagery with a variety of ancillary datasets within an object oriented rule-base classification approach.  This map has been used as a key element in assessing the transferability of the Welsh mapping approach to Ireland.