Essentially, Andalucía consists of a large plain, the valley of the Rio Guadalquivir, hemmed in by mountains on every side except for the south-west where this river reaches the Atlantic Ocean. The combination of mountains, a large river valley and coastal plains provide a wide range of different habitats . In a mere 50 kilometres one can travel from the subtropical coast within the province of Granada to the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Andalucia also includes both the dry Tabernas Desert in the province of Almería and the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park in the province of Cádiz, which experiences Spain’s greatest rainfall. All told, there is a wide variation of habitat that attracts a wide range of natural life.
The following habitat codes have been adopted by the Society to represent this large range of habitats in Andalucia. These codes are used by members when providing bird-sighting data. They are aligned to the habitat codes used by SEO to allow the interchange of data when necessary.
In each of our site descriptions we also use these habitat codes to describe the habitat that you will encounter at that site.
W – Woodland – Woodland covers habitat which has trees greater than 3 metres tall occupying more than 5% of the study area. Agricultural and urban woodlands are coded separately in Farmland and Inhabited Areas.
S – Scrub – Scrub includes habitat that have plants less than 3 metres tall occupying more than 25% of the study area. Agricultural and urban scrublands are coded separately in Farmland and Inhabited Areas.
P – Pasture – Pasture is defined as all those open habitats (<5% of trees and <25% of shrubs) in which the predominant vegetation is not woody, except in the case of agricultural and urban, which are coded separately in Farmland and Inhabited Areas.
F – Farmland – Farmland is habitats that are under agricultural management that clearly achieve coverage in the study area of more than 25%.
H – Inhabited Areas – These are habitats subject to constant human presence, except in the case of agriculture, which is coded separately.
WT – Interior Wetlands – Interior Wetlands includes habitats such as treeless river banks (rivers, streams, ditches, etc., more than a meter wide) and reservoirs, lakes, ponds, lagoons, marshes etc.
C – Coasts – Coasts includes habitats such as the open sea, cliffs, shore land, beaches, estuaries, coastal salt marshes and dunes.
R – Interior Rocky Terrain – This code includes habitats with little or no vegetation such as mountains, extensive areas of large boulders, scree, steep rocky gorges etc.)
O – Other – This code covers any habitat that is not covered by the habitat codes above. When using this code please state what habitat you are referring too.
Download the habitat codes