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1. Summary |
Recent and few studies
have been developed to define a comprehensive system that allows the
classification and delimitation of main marine and coastal systems of
Colombia. A very ambitious initiative started in 2005 aiming to map natural
terrestrial as well as marine natural ecosystems at 1:500.000 scale with the
result of a consolidated geodatabase. The need to offer a unified form of
these systems to national users and to allow its comparison with regional
and global scopes is the main motivation of this project. An initial zoning
of the marine ecosystems (coralline areas and sea grasses), slabs (mangroves
and coastal lagoons) and bottom seascapes (155 distributed on the Caribbean
Sea and the Pacific Ocean) incorporates the guidelines proposed by MEOW as
well as those of the WGMHM. This zoning is based on a hierarchical
structuring of categories or levels, at which a key code is assigned to
identify them, ranging from the two biogeographic marine regions, three
provinces, 13 ecozones, 21 natural ecoregions, that frame the 155 marine
landscapes and the four coastal marine ecosystems. As a result from the
application of the CMECS is hoped to be able to have a beginning to a
unified model of classification applied to two systems: Coralline areas and
sea grasses, more suitable for the tropical zones and allowing making
crossed references for present and future initiatives on detailed scale
approaches. |
