Ecological Vegetation Class

An Ecological Vegetation Class (EVC) is a component of a vegetation classification system. They are groupings of vegetation communities based on floristic, structural, and ecological features. The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has defined all of the EVC's within Victoria.

An EVC consists of one or a number of floristic communities that appear to be associated with a recognisable environmental niche, and which can be characterised by a number of their adaptive responses to ecological processes that operate at the landscape scale level. Each ecological vegetation class is described through a combination of its floristic, life-form, and reproductive strategy profiles, and through an inferred fidelity to particular environmental attributes.

Although there are many hundred individual EVC classes, they can also be grouped together to form aBiogreion. Which is a landscape-scale approach to classifying the environment using a range of attributes such as climate, geomorphology, geology, soils and vegetation. There are 28 bioregion's across Victoria. Each EVC within a biogreion can be assigned a conservation status, to indicate its degree of alteration since European settlement in Australia. To assist with the assessment of an EVC within a bioregion, benchmarks have been established to ensure that assessments are carried out in a standard fashion across Victoria

References

External links

• EVC Benchmarks for each Bioregion