After six years of investigation, the first map of the nation’s vegetation — almost 60 percent of which is forest — was published on Thursday.
Officials at the Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau said the map can be used as a “treasure map” to discover the distribution of plant species and expand conservation areas if necessary.
The first national vegetation resources inventory project, which began in 2003, involved hundreds of people climbing hundreds of mountains around the nation, the officials said. A total of 1.62 million hectares was mapped, with more than 670,000 hectares, or about 41 percent, designated conservation areas, the Forestry Bureau said.
The map, which is to be sold for NT$1,200, can serve as a reference point for ecological conservation and national land planning, the bureau said.
“Just like a treasure map, it can tell us what kinds of plant communities we have and exactly where they are so that we can plan conservation,” Forestry Bureau Deputy Director-General Lee Tao-sheng (李桃生) said.
Up to 67 percent of native vascular plant species were recorded and 59 percent of the total area of Taiwan was mapped in the project, said Hsieh Chang-fu (謝長富), president of the Taiwan Society of Biodiversity Conservation, who headed the project.
One of the most noteworthy findings was the discovery of a new habitat of the Taiwan Beech, a rare and valuable endemic plant species, in the mountains of Yilan County, Hsieh said.
The new beech forest, covering about 35 hectares, was found at the lowest altitude ever for the species, in the Dabai Mountain (大白山) and Lankan Mountain (蘭嵌山) areas near Suao (蘇澳), he said.
Beech forests are mostly found in Europe and temperate areas of North America, so it was surprising to discover a new natural growth in subtropical Taiwan, Hsieh said.
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