Ecological vegetation class facts for kids
An ecological vegetation class (EVC) is a special way to group and understand different types of plants and their homes in Victoria, Australia. Since 1994, it has been used to map and protect the amazing variety of plants and nature found there.
EVCs bring together groups of plants that live in similar places. They look at the types of plants, how they grow, and how they fit into their natural surroundings. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Victoria has described all the different EVCs across the state.
Each EVC is like a unique natural neighborhood. It includes plants that are good at living in certain environments. Scientists describe each EVC by looking at its plants, their shapes, and how they reproduce. They also consider what kind of environment the plants prefer.
There are over 300 different EVCs! Some of these EVCs can be grouped into larger areas called bioregions. A bioregion is a bigger natural area defined by its climate, landforms, rocks, soils, and plants. Victoria has 28 different bioregions. Each EVC within a bioregion is given a conservation status. This status tells us how much the EVC has changed since European people first settled in Australia. To make sure everyone assesses EVCs the same way, special guidelines have been created.
How EVCs Were Developed
Ecological vegetation classes grew from earlier ways of mapping plant groups. Before EVCs, people often mapped plants based on their structure. This meant looking at how tall plants were, how dense they were, and what kinds of plants made up the main tree cover.
The idea of EVCs was first used in 1994. It helped map old-growth forests in East Gippsland, Victoria. Scientists created two main types of EVC maps:
- Extant EVCs: These maps showed the plants as they were at the time of mapping (in the 1990s).
- Pre-1750 EVCs: These maps showed what experts believed the plant groups looked like before European settlement, roughly around the year 1750. This helped understand how much nature had changed.
In 1996, a group of scientists reviewed the EVC method. They agreed that EVCs were a very important way to map plants across Victoria. They also said EVCs were a good way to check how well different plant types were being protected.
EVC mapping was used for big projects in the late 1990s. These projects helped map the entire state of Victoria. This mapping was done at a scale of 1:100,000, which means one unit on the map represents 100,000 units in real life.
How EVCs Are Used
Applications
Mapping ecological vegetation classes has become a key tool for planning and managing nature in Victoria. The maps are available to everyone. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning has an online map called NatureKit. This tool lets you see different plant maps for any area in Victoria. You can view current EVCs, pre-1750 EVCs, and even the conservation status of EVCs in different bioregions.
The Victorian government has also shared the EVC map data for free. This data can be used with GIS software. This allows scientists, planners, and anyone interested to use the EVC information for their own projects.
Conservation Status
By combining an EVC's status with its bioregion, we can find its bioregional conservation status. This helps us compare how much of an EVC is left today compared to how it was before 1750. It shows us how much it has changed.
The Victorian Government uses six different conservation statuses:
- Presumed extinct (X): This means the EVC is thought to be completely gone.
- Endangered (E): This means the EVC is at very high risk of disappearing forever.
- Vulnerable (V): This means the EVC is at high risk of disappearing.
- Depleted (D): This means a lot of the EVC has been lost, but it's not as critical as endangered or vulnerable.
- Rare (R): This means the EVC doesn't occur very often naturally.
- Least concern (LC): This means the EVC is still common and not currently at risk.
