Report on Habitat Map Making

Introduction:

Habitat map is a useful tool to provide an impression of the habitat types occurred in an area. It is required in EIA study and other environmental study. In this workshop, we formed a group of 3 people and used the basemap (in A3 size) provided to create a habitat map. To create a habitat map, second hand source and ground truthing is needed.

Before ground truthing:

First, we used Google Earth to get an initial understanding of the habitat types of the area. Second, we decided the route that we would conduct ground truthing to verify the habitat types within the study area and see if it is different from the second hand sources.

Ground truthing during workshop:

During the workshop, we followed the route that we decided, which was walking along the Sai Shan Rd and climbing stairs and reached a platform where we could observe the overall habitat around Tsing Yi IVE, and also observed the habitat type of the surrounding environment along the way. However, there were some area that we could not reach which we had to estimate its habitat type from other online sources or from observation from afar.

Observation made during ground truthing:

Habitat Type - During the ground truthing, we have observed 5 kind of habitat types in the study area, including Shrubland, Woodland, Marine Waters, Urbanised/Disturbed area and Stream. From our observation, the dominant habitat type in the area was Woodland. For the area that we have been to, we observed some habitat type, such as Stream, Woodland, Shrubland and Urbanised/Disturbed area (School, some residential buildings). As mentioned above, for some area that we could not reach, we had to estimate its habitat type from afar, such as the Marine Water, some Shrubland and Woodland that were far away and some Uranised/Disturbed area (plantations on the slope). We also used Google Earth to estimate some Uranised/Disturbed area (plantations aside the road, some far away residential buildings,...