Vegetation covers some 60% of the land surface in Hong Kong.
It offers diverse habitats and food for the local fauna (animals). It
also helps improve air and water quality, prevent water runoff and soil
erosion.
Knowledge of vegetation is important to numerous scientific (and
other) disciplines, such as biology, ecology, forestry, agronomy, hydrology,
meteorology, and even some social sciences. Very often, vegetation analyses
may offer information for a diverse array of questions. For example, an
agricultural specialist might use satellite images of vegetation to monitor
crop production while a sociologist could use the same images to study
land use practices. Foresters could look at forest extent to estimate
timber amount while ecologists might need to use similar spatial areas
in studies of nutrient cycling.
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