SwissED

Swiss Environmental Domains

Swiss Environmental Domains (SwissED) is an environmental classification of key climatic, geologic and topographic variables influencing both natural and anthropogenic processes at various scales. It represents a new spatial framework to analyse data about our environment (e.g. biodiversity, land cover, demography, agriculture, economical activities) that is not replacing existing ones but simply complementing them.

Although Environmental Domains were initially developed as a tool for biodiversity management, it has a much wider application. Actually, environmental factors that control the distributions of many land-based plants and animals (temperature, water supply, etc.) are also factors that provide major constraints on human land uses such as agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

Compared to a traditional ecosystem classification, generally depending on subjective synthesis of multiple information sources, this multivariate classification approach presents several advantages because it is adjustable, categorical, repeatable and scalable.

The method was originally developed in New Zealand by John Leathwick at Landcare Research organisation (Leathwick J.R. et al. 2003, Conservation Biology, 17: 1612-1623.).

This project was mandated by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).