Biodiversity patterns of dry grasslands in the Central Apennines (Italy) along a precipitation gradient : experiences from the 10th EDGG Field Workshop

The 10th EDGG Field Workshop took place in a sector of the Central Apennine Mountains, Italy, in June 2017. Altogether, 22 researchers from nine European and Asian countries attended this Field Workshop. We sampled plant and insect biodiversity in submontane and lower-montane grasslands along a precipitation gradient, from the L’Aquila valley and the Fucino basin to the “Abruzzo, Lazio & Molise” National Park. The standardized EDGG sampling protocol, involving nested-plot series and additional 10-m2 relevés, was used. In the course of seven days of intensive fieldwork, we sampled 20 biodiversity plots along with 57 additional normal plots (yielding a total dataset of 97 10-m2 plots). Methodological additions tested in this workshop included the assessment of observer-related error (around 12% of the 10-m2 plots was resurveyed by a different team). In all plots, vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens were sampled. At each nested-plot series, also insects (Auchenorrhyncha) were sampled by local specialists, who developed an ad-hoc sampling procedure

GrassPlot - a database of multi-scale plant diversity in Palaearctic grasslands

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (releves) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots of eight standard grain sizes (0.0001; 0.001;... 1,000 m(2)) and on nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes. The usage of GrassPlot is regulated through Bylaws that intend to balance the interests of data contributors and data users. The current version (v. 1.00) contains data for approximately 170,000 plots of different sizes and 2,800 nested-plot series. The key components are richness data and metadata. However, most included datasets also encompass compositional data. About 14,000 plots have near-complete records of terricolous bryophytes and lichens in addition to vascular plants. At present, GrassPlot contains data from 36 countries throughout the Palaearctic, spread across elevational gradients and major grassland types. GrassPlot with its multi-scale and multi-taxon focus complements the larger international vegetationplot databases, such as the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and the global database " sPlot". Its main aim is to facilitate studies on the scale-and taxon-dependency of biodiversity patterns and drivers along macroecological gradients. GrassPlot is a dynamic database and will expand through new data collection coordinated by the elected Governing Board. We invite researchers with suitable data to join GrassPlot. Researchers with project ideas addressable with GrassPlot data are welcome to submit proposals to the Governing Board

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

<scp>ReSurveyEurope</scp>: A database of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe

AbstractAimsWe introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, including potential research questions.ResultsReSurveyEurope includes resurveyed vegetation plots from all habitats. Version 1.0 of ReSurveyEurope contains 283,135 observations (i.e., individual surveys of each plot) from 79,190 plots sampled in 449 independent resurvey projects. Of these, 62,139 (78%) are permanent plots, that is, marked in situ, or located with GPS, which allow for high spatial accuracy in resurvey. The remaining 17,051 (22%) plots are from studies in which plots from the initial survey could not be exactly relocated. Four data sets, which together account for 28,470 (36%) plots, provide only presence/absence information on plant species, while the remaining 50,720 (64%) plots contain abundance information (e.g., percentage cover or cover–abundance classes such as variants of the Braun‐Blanquet scale). The oldest plots were sampled in 1911 in the Swiss Alps, while most plots were sampled between 1950 and 2020.ConclusionsReSurveyEurope is a new resource to address a wide range of research questions on fine‐scale changes in European vegetation. The initiative is devoted to an inclusive and transparent governance and data usage approach, based on slightly adapted rules of the well‐established European Vegetation Archive (EVA). ReSurveyEurope data are ready for use, and proposals for analyses of the data set can be submitted at any time to the coordinators. Still, further data contributions are highly welcome.</jats:sec

RanVegDunes - A random plot database of Italian coastal dunes

We introduce RanVegDunes (GIVD ID EU-IT-020), the first Italian database gathering standardized, randomly- sampled vegetation data in coastal dune environments. RanVegDunes currently consists of 979 original georeferenced relevés randomly collected over about 160 km of Holocenic dune systems of central Italy between 2002 and 2015. Plots were located in five Italian administrative regions (Lazio, Campania, Abruzzo, Molise and Puglia), where sandy vegetation was randomly recorded in standardized 4-m2plots across the whole coastal zonation, thus including upper beach, embryo dunes, shifting dunes, dune grasslands, wooded dunes and Mediterranean forests. Each plot was georeferenced with a high level of accuracy using a GPS unit. For each plot, a list of vascular plant species based on updated nomenclature was compiled, and an estimate of abundance was calculated for each species using a percentage cover scale ranging from 1 to 10 (1 = 1-10%; 2 = 10-20%; ...; 10 = 90-100%). Two habitat classification systems were used for the description of collected plots: specifically, each vegetation plot was classified according to the Interpretation Manual of the 92/43/EEC Habitats Directive and also to the hierarchical structure of the EUNIS habitat classification. Currently, RanVegDunes includes vegetation plots belonging to nine EU Habitats (1210, 2110, 2120, 2210, 2230, 2250, 2260, 2270, 9340), which in turn correspond to five EUNIS Habitats (B1.1, B1.3, B1.4, B1.6, B1.7). RanVegDunes is a powerful tool for a variety of studies addressing topics such as temporal trends in coastal vegetation, ecological modeling, re-visitation studies, spatio-temporal patterns of invasion and will therefore greatly benefit from further collection of data

Above‐ and belowground traits along a stress gradient: trade‐off or not?

The role of plant traits in shaping community assembly along environmental gradients is a topic of ongoing research. It is well accepted that plant traits of aboveground organs tend to be conservative in stressful conditions. However, there is limited understanding of how belowground traits respond. Plants may have similar strategies above and belowground, but an intriguing possibility is that there is a tradeoff between above and belowground traits of communities to both ensure efficient resource-use and limit niche overlap along the gradient. To test this, we asked whether the response of above and belowground traits of communities is coordinated or not along a stress gradient in Mediterranean sand dune communities. We analyzed 80 vegetation plots in central Italy to test for coordinated vs independent patterns in above vs belowground plant traits using community weighted mean and standardized effect size of functional richness. Our results show that plant communities close to the sea, which experience higher stress, were characterized by higher convergence towards aboveground resource conservation and conservative water-use strategies but belowground resource acquisition, consistent with a strong effect of habitat filtering and an above–belowground tradeoff favoring adaptation to harsh and dry conditions. At the opposite end of the gradient with lower stress, plants exhibited higher trait diversity for both above and belowground traits, but overall a dominance of aboveground fast resource acquisition and generally acquisitive water-use strategies, combined with conservative belowground strategies. This suggests that fast growth rate aboveground was compensated by more conservative fine-root strategies, but processes such as competition limited niche overlap overall. Our findings provide new insights into the relationship between functional traits and environmental gradients in plant communities, shedding light on the tradeoffs between the above and belowground dimensions

Ecology meets archaeology: Past, present and future vegetation-derived ecosystems services from the Nuragic Sardinia (1700–580 BCE)

Incorporating archaeology within the ecosystem services (ES) framework can offer decision-makers lessons from the past and a broader sustainability perspective. Given the claimed archaeology-ES link, the island of Sardinia (Italy) offers an unparalleled opportunity where a unique archaeological heritage occurs in an area of high biodiversity value. More than 5000 nuraghi, megalithic edifices distinctive of the Nuragic civilization (1700–580 BCE), are still present on the island. By crossing the map of Vegetation Series (VS) with nuraghi occurrences, we aimed at acquiring a long-term perspective on the interactions between Nuragic people and the vegetation as ES provider, so as to enrich our understanding of the past and the present, and potentially inform future practice for the region of Sardinia. A VS is here intended as a hypothesis of a succession of plant communities that can potentially succeed each other over time in a particular land unit. The vegetation-derived ES represented a driving force in the land occupation strategies of the Nuragic people, who preferred, for their settlements, the mesophiluos cork oak VS and secondary the deciduous broad-leaved ones, which, with fresh climatic conditions on fertile substrates and gentle slopes on effusive magmatic rocks, can provide land for grazing and agriculture. Conversely, the Nuragic land occupation strategies shaped the VS, transforming the landscape into agro-silvo-pastoral systems. Our results suggest that the origin of the present agro-silvo-pastoral landscapes (i.e. Pascolo arborato/Dehesa) in Sardinia could be traced back to the Nuragic civilization. The interaction between humans and vegetation in Sardinia is ancient, reciprocal and dynamic. This interaction is crucial for the survival of the present agro-silvo-pastoral landscapes that represent important suppliers of provisioning, regulating and cultural ES. Among others, these landscapes are a good example of intimate and sustainable relationships between people and nature and provide a marked sense of place and identity for Sardinia inhabitants. This transdisciplinary approach linking plant ecology with archaeology offered archaeology a better understanding of the environmental settings and subsistence of the Nuragic civilization and provided plant ecology with a long-term perspective on human-vegetation interactions. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog

LOTVS: A Global Collection of Permanent Vegetation Plots

Analysing temporal patterns in plant communities is extremely important to quantify the extent and the consequences of ecological changes, especially considering the current biodiversity crisis. Long-term data collected through the regular sampling of permanent plots represent the most accurate resource to study ecological succession, analyse the stability of a community over time and understand the mechanisms driving vegetation change. We hereby present the LOng-Term Vegetation Sampling (LOTVS) initiative, a global collection of vegetation time-series derived from the regular monitoring of plant species in permanent plots. With 79 data sets from five continents and 7,789 vegetation time-series monitored for at least 6 years and mostly on an annual basis, LOTVS possibly represents the largest collection of temporally fine-grained vegetation time-series derived from permanent plots and made accessible to the research community. As such, it has an outstanding potential to support innovative research in the fields of vegetation science, plant ecology and temporal ecology.Czech Science Foundation 19-28491XCzech Academy of Sciences RVO 67985939Gobierno de España PGC2018-099027-B-I00, PID2019-110521GB-I00German Federal Ministry of Education and Research 031B0516C, 01LG1201N, 01LC0024, 01LC0024A, 01LC0624A2, 01LG1201A, 01LG1201NComunidad Autónoma de Madrid 2017-T2/AMB-5406, M216