DOI: 10.16904/envidat.723
title: The Habitat Map of Switzerland v1_2 2025

description: Lebensraumkarte der Schweiz v1.2 2025/La carte des milieux naturels de Suisse v1.2 2025
The FOEN funded project ‘The Habitat Map of Switzerland:continual improvement’ conducted at the WSL, has improved on versions 1.0 and 1.1 of a map of Swiss habitats according to the TypoCH classification (Delarze et al. 2015). The datasets is now separated into two data sets: The Habitat Map of Switzerland v1.2, ground cover layer, and The Habitat Map of Switzerland v1.2, individual trees and shrubs outside forest v1.0 (above ground) layer. 
The Habitat Map of Switzerland maps the TypoCH habitat types wall-to-wall across the whole of Switzerland, to at least the classification’s 2nd level of detail (where possible to the 3rd level of detail).
Habitats are mapped through a variety of approaches that can be grouped as either:
1: Derived from the existing Swiss-wide datasets a) the high quality landcover mapping from Swisstopo’s Topographical Landscape Model (TLM), b) the harmonised mapping of agricultural fields area from the ‘Landwirtschaftliche Nutzfläche’ (LWN) mapping and, in settlements areas, c) the harmonised cadastral data (‘Amitliche Vermessung’ AV). 
2: Modelled within the project using Random Forest or Ensemble Modelling techniques to model the spatial distribution of individual habitat types (further detail below),
3: Combining existing species distribution models to determine habitat types, or
4: Classification with relatively simple rule-sets based on auxiliary spatial datasets, i.e. vegetation height models (based on digital aerial photogrammetry and/or SwissSurface3D aerial laser scanning (ALS) data), the digital terrain model, the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from aerial imagery and/or time-series of growing season Sentinel-2 or Planet satellite imagery.
Further detail on the methodology can be found within the README document.
description: Resource Title: N2025_HabitatMap_CH_v1_2_20251211.gdb.zip
 Size: 7247757312 bytes
 Format: application/zip
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/a90d17bf-221e-4819-a8b1-94b807a33720/download/n2025_habitatmap_ch_v1_2_20251211.gdb.zip
 Description: The Habitat Map of Switzerland version 1.2 2025. Ground cover layer, All of Switzerland. Vector data in file geodatabase format. Is complemented by the trees and shrubs layer.
description: Resource Title: N2025_einzelbaum_gebuesche_v1_0_20251216.gdb.zip
 Size: 2469606195 bytes
 Format: application/zip
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/cd4e36db-926c-4e2b-bb89-27dbe606dac3/download/n2025_einzelbaum_gebuesche_v1_0_20251216.gdb.zip
 Description: The Habitat Map of Switzerland v1.2, non-forest trees and shrubs layer, v1.0. Vector dataset in file geodatabase format. Complements the ground cover layer dataset
description: Resource Title: symbology_v1_2_2025.zip
 Size: 61778 bytes
 Format: application/zip
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/47c0e914-986f-4ad3-9bcf-49160023c030/download/symbology_v1_2_2025.zip
 Description: Symbology for the Habitat Map, ground layer and tree and shrub layer, and in ArcGIS and QGIS layer formats. German, French and Italian versions
description: Resource Title: Data_Description_Lebensraumkarte_v1_2_Dec2025.pdf
 Size: 645376 bytes
 Format: application/pdf
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/564b16e5-0523-4431-94bc-3e6d1415c5a1/download/data_description_lebensraumkarte_v1_2_dec2025.pdf
 Description: Data description and documentation of methods
description: Resource Title: TypoCH_NUM_LookupTable_26112025.csv
 Size: 46705 bytes
 Format: text/csv
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/28aace15-eb00-4ec2-98ef-b55acc18286f/download/typoch_num_lookuptable_26112025.csv
 Description: Look up table for the data N2025_HabitatMap_CH_v1_2_20251211
giving the full text names for habitat types in German, French and Italian for each habitat type as well as the key for the type of methodology used
description: Resource Title: LUT_einzelbaum_gebuesch_v_1_0.csv
 Size: 216 bytes
 Format: text/csv
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/d6182107-2086-49c0-97dd-f3a77056157c/resource/0035dd77-ea6d-4d3a-89bd-3ad6ee36302e/download/lut_einzelbaum_gebuesch_v_1_0.csv
 Description: Look up table for the data N2025_einzelbaum_gebuesche_v1_0_20251216
giving the full text names for each habitat type in German, French and Italian