Asukohade

Asukohade is the Estonian genitive plural form of the noun asukohad, which means habitats or places of residence. In Estonian, the genitive plural is used to indicate possession or association, so asukohade translates roughly to “of habitats.” The term appears mainly in ecological, environmental, and geographic texts, where it serves to refer to the natural or semi-natural places inhabited by species, communities, or ecological processes. Common phrases include asukohade kadumine (loss of habitats) and asukohade kaitse (protection of habitats).

In practice, asukohade is used to discuss topics such as habitat loss, fragmentation, and conservation planning. It can appear in policy documents, scientific papers, and environmental reports to specify the habitats involved in a given issue. While its primary focus is ecological, the word may also appear in contexts describing human settlements and land use when these are treated as habitats within urban or regional planning studies.

The term reflects Estonian noun-phrase morphology, where the base noun asukohad changes to asukohade to express the genitive plural. This pattern is common in Estonian and can be encountered in various technical and formal texts. For readers of Estonian, recognizing asukohade as the genitive plural of asukohad helps identify that the discussion concerns habitats or related possession/association.

See also: habitat, biodiversity, conservation, Estonian language grammar.