La vegetación en los mapas

Résumé

The vegetation map constitutes a documentary source and a basic tool in scientific and technical works. The importance of vegetation mapping requires taking into account the methods, the dominant thoughts and the technical limitations inherent in each era, which have conditioned its development. This paper offers an analysis of the information contained in vegetation maps and their dependence on the mapper’s objective and the choice of map elements (legend and scale). The heterogeneity of methodologies and objectives in the maps hinders the cross consultation in the so-called territorial GIS and also conditions the accuracy of the limits in the elaboration of synthetic cartographies from several sources. The capacity and limitations of diachronic mapping are also analyzed. Technical advances from the midtwentieth century, and the use of GIS, have led to a change in cartographic procedures with an unquestionable increase in quality and a saving of time and effort.