4.3 Estonian mire habitats in the international context In last decades several all-European habitat classification systems have been compiled. Their first versions were hardly real classification systems but mostly just simple lists of habitat units distinguished by greatly different criteria. The latest versions, instead, have been quite converged, the criteria for delimiting the habitats are fairly conformed and the results, therefore, largely overlapping.
4.3.1 CORINE habitat classification Initially the CORINE (COoRdinated INformation on the Environment of Europe) Land Cover Programme applied a method for land cover data collection based on a hardcopy inventory from satellite image printouts. This proved to be the most feasible approach in the mid-1980s, the starting period of the programme (Bossard et al., 2000). Thereafter the European Commission and the Council of Europe started to work out plans for protection of habitat types of priority importance and/or being endangered in the European scale; the habitat classification of CORINE was used for that as a basis. The CORINE classification has been repeatedly amended, in the last version (Devillers et al., 2005) the following types are presented at least partly corresponding to the Estonian mire habitat types: 51 Raised bogs 51.1 Near-natural raised bogs 51.11 Bog hummocks, ridges and lawns 51.111 Colourful sphagnum hummocks (bulten) 51.112 Green sphagnum hummocks bases and lawns 51.113 Dwarf shrub hummocks 51.12 Bog hollows (schlenken) 51.121 Deep schlenken (Caricetum limosae p.) 51.122 Shallow schlenken (Rhynchosporetum albae) 51.13 Bog pools 51.131 Bog eye (kolk) 51.14 Bog seeps and soaks 51.15 Laggs 51.16 Bog pre-woods 54 Fens, transition mires and springs 54.23 Davall sedge fens (Caricetum davallianae) 54.21 Tall herb fens 54.4 Acidic fens 54.5 Transition mires 54.51 Slender-sedge swards (Caricetum lasiocarpae) 54.52 Carex diandra quaking mires (Caricetum diandrae) 54.53 Bottle sedge quaking mires 54.54 Mud sedge swards (Caricetum limosae p.) 54.55 String sedge swards (Drepanoclado-Caricetum chordorrhizae) 54.57 Beak-sedge quaking bogs (Sphagno-Rhynchosporetum albae) 54.58 Sphagnum and cottongrass rafts 54.59 Bog bean and marsh cinquefoil rafts 54.5C Harestail cottongrass quaking bogs 54.6 White beak-sedge communities (Rhynchosporion albae)
ESTONIAN MIRES: INVENTORY OF HABITATS
53