Amorpha fruticosa invasibility of different habitats in lower Danube

Abstract. Danube River plays a role of major corridor for plant invasions. Downstream is expected to be more strongly affected by such invasions. There were scarce data about alien plants dispersion by habitats in Bulgarian part of Danube. Sampling sites were selected on the river banks and on several islands and Amorpha fruticosa cover together with number of alien plants were sampled. Four habitat types were recognized. Most affected by indigo bush were poplar plantations while natural forests due to their closed structure and biodiversity remain less influenced

FLORA, MYCOTA AND VEGETATION OF KUPENA RESERVE (RODOPI MOUNTAINS, BULGARIA)

The paper represents results from recent complex studies of flora, mycota and vegetation within the Kupena Reserve (Rodopi Mts, Bulgaria). Twenty three species, referred to 2 divisions, 4 classes and 16 families are recorded for the bryoflora. The vascular flora is presented by 368 species from 57 families, 121 of which are considered as medicinal plants. Eighty seven species of larger ascomycetes and basidiomycetes are found and reported for first time in the reserve. Four of them are of a high conservation value. The vegetation cover is consisted of mixed and monodominant deciduous and coniferous forests, as well as of mire, riverbank and mesic grasslands. Thirteen types of habitats according to the Habitats Directive classification have been recorded within the reserve

Pregled zveze Potentillo ternatae–Nardion strictae

A classification of the Nardus stricta dominated communities in the Balkan Range is presented. Two associations are identified: Nardetum strictae and Campanulo alpinae – Nardetum strictae nom. nov. The alliance Potentillo ternatae – Nardion strictae is typified and some comments on its distribution range and syntaxonomical affiliation to the higher units are presented. A synopsis is included of all available associations referred to Potentillo ternatae – Nardion strictae.V članku je predstavljena klasifikacija združb z dominantno vrsto Nardus stricta na Balkanu. Prikazali smo dve asociaciji: Nardetum strictae and Campanulo alpinae – Nardetum strictae nom. nov. Zvezo Potentillo ternatae – Nardion strictae smo tipizirali in predstavili njeno razširjenost in sintaksonomsko uvrstitev v višje enote. Prikazan je sinopsis vseh opisanih asociacij, ki jih uvrščamo v zvezo Potentillo ternatae – Nardion strictae

Cultural monuments and nature conservation: a review of the role of kurgans in the conservation and restoration of steppe vegetation

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Cultural monuments and nature conservation: a review of the role of kurgans in the conservation and restoration of steppe vegetation

Steppe is among the most endangered biomes of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, where more than 90 % of original steppes have been destroyed due to conversion into croplands, afforestation and other human activities. Currently, steppe vegetation is often restricted to places unsuitable for ploughing, such as ancient burial mounds called kurgans. The aim of our study was to collect and synthesise existing knowledge on kurgans by a review of research papers and grey literature. The proportion of kurgans covered by steppe vegetation increases from west to east and from lowlands to uplands. Despite their small size, kurgans act as biodiversity hotspots and harbour many red-listed species. High overall species richness and a high proportion of grassland specialists are maintained by a pronounced fine-scale environmental heterogeneity. The main factors threatening the biodiversity of kurgans are intensified agriculture and construction works. We conclude that kurgans can play a crucial role in preserving steppe vegetation, especially in intensively used agricultural landscapes in the western part of the steppe zone. Despite the vital role of kurgans in sustaining steppe vegetation, we identified serious knowledge gaps on their distribution, vegetation, flora and fauna and their potential role in steppe restoration

How plot shape and spatial arrangement affect plant species richness counts: implications for sampling design and rarefaction analyses

Questions: How does the spatial configuration of sampling units influence recorded plant species richness values at small spatial scales? What are the consequences of these findings for sampling methodology and rarefaction analyses? Location: Six semi‐natural grasslands in Western Eurasia (France, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Turkey). Methods: In each site we established six blocks of 40 cm × 280 cm, subdivided into 5 cm × 5 cm micro‐quadrats, on which we recorded vascular plant species presence with the rooted (all sites) and shoot (four sites) presence method. Data of these micro‐quadrats were then combined to achieve larger sampling units of 0.01, 0.04 and 0.16 m² grain size with six different spatial configurations (square, 4:1 rectangle, 16:1 rectangle, three variants of discontiguous randomly placed micro‐quadrats). The effect of the spatial configurations on species richness was quantified as relative richness compared to the mean richness of the square of the same surface area. Results: Square sampling units had significantly lower species richness than other spatial configurations in all countries. For 4:1 and 16:1 rectangles, the increase of rooted richness was on average about 2% and 8%, respectively. In contrast, the average richness increase for discontiguous configurations was 7%, 17% and 40%. In general, increases were higher with shoot presence than with rooted presence. Overall, the patterns of richness increase were highly consistent across six countries, three grain sizes and two recording methods. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the shape of sampling units has negligible effects on species richness values when the length–width ratio is up to 4:1, and the effects remain small even for more elongated contiguous configurations. In contrast, results from discontiguous sampling units are not directly comparable with those of contiguous sampling units, and are strongly confounded by spatial extent. This is particularly problematic for rarefaction studies where spatial extent is often not controlled for. We suggest that the concept of effective area is a useful tool to report effects of spatial configuration on richness values, and introduce species–extent relationships (SERs) to describe richness increases of different spatial configurations of sampling units

Contribution of Cultural Heritage Values to Steppe Conservation on Ancient Burial Mounds of Eurasia = Contribución de los valores culturales para la conservación esteparia en los antiguos montículos funerarios de Eurasia

Civilizations, including ancient ones, have shaped global ecosystems in many ways through coevolution of landscapes and humans. However, the cultural legacies of ancient and lost civilizations are rarely considered in the conservation of the Eurasian steppe biome. We used a data set containing more than 1000 records on localities, land cover, protection status, and cultural values related to ancient steppic burial mounds (kurgans); we evaluated how these iconic and widespread landmarks can contribute to grassland conservation in the Eurasian steppes, which is one of the most endangered biomes on Earth. Using Bayesian logistic generalized regressions and proportional odds logistic regressions, we examined the potential of mounds to preserve grasslands in landscapes with different levels of landuse transformation. We also compared the conservation potential of mounds inside and outside protected areas and assessed whether local cultural values support the maintenance of grasslands on them. Kurgans were of great importance in preserving grasslands in transformed landscapes outside protected areas, where they sometimes acted as habitat islands that contributed to habitat conservation and improved habitat connectivity. In addition to steep slopes hindering ploughing, when mounds had cultural value for local communities, the probability of grassland occurrence on kurgans almost doubled. Because the estimated number of steppic mounds is about 600,000 and similar historical features exist on all continents, our results may be applicable at a global level. Our results also suggested that an integrative socioecological approach in conservation might support the positive synergistic effects of conservation, landscape, and cultural values. Las civilizaciones modernas y antiguas han moldeado de muchas maneras los ecosistemas globales mediante la coevolución del paisaje y la humanidad. Sin embargo, pocas veces se considera el legado cultural de las civilizaciones perdidas o antiguas para la conservación del bioma de la estepa euroasiática. Usamos un conjunto de datos que contiene más de 1,000 registros de las localidades, cobertura del suelo, estado de protección y valores culturales relacionados con los antiguos montículos funerarios de esta estepa (kurgans). Después analizamos cómo estos símbolos icónicos y distribuidos extensamente pueden contribuir a la conservación de los pastizales en la estepa euroasiática, uno de los biomas en mayor peligro de extinción. Analizamos el potencial de conservación de los montículos en paisajes con diferentes niveles de transformación en el uso de suelo mediante regresiones logísticas generalizadas bayesianas y regresiones logísticas de probabilidades proporcionales. También comparamos el potencial de conservación de los montículos dentro y fuera de las áreas protegidas y evaluamos si los valores culturales locales conservan los pastizales dentro de estas mismas áreas. Los kurgans fueron de gran importancia para la conservación de los pastizales en los paisajes transformados ubicados fuera de las áreas protegidas, en donde llegaron a fungir como hábitats aislados que contribuyeron a la conservación y conectividad del hábitat. Además de que las pendientes pronunciadas impiden el arado, cuando los montículos contaban con valor cultural para las comunidades locales, la probabilidad de que el pastizal se ubicara sobre un kurgan casi se duplicó. Ya que se estima que el número de montículos esteparios ronda los 6,000 y que rasgos históricos similares existen en todos los continentes, nuestros resultados pueden aplicarse a nivel global. Nuestros resultados también sugieren que una estrategia socioecológica integradora para la conservación podría respaldar los efectos sinérgicos positivos de la conservación, el paisaje y los valores culturales

sPlot:a new tool for global vegetation analyses

Abstract Aims: Vegetation‐plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co‐occurring in the same community. Vegetation‐plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level. Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community‐weighted means and variances of traits using gap‐filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community‐weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale

Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats

Abstract Aims: Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the former three groups). Location: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods: We used 126,524 plots of eight standard grain sizes from the GrassPlot database: 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 m² and calculated the mean richness and standard deviations, as well as maximum, minimum, median, and first and third quartiles for each combination of grain size, taxonomic group, biome, region, vegetation type and phytosociological class. Results: Patterns of plant diversity in vegetation types and biomes differ across grain sizes and taxonomic groups. Overall, secondary (mostly semi-natural) grasslands and natural grasslands are the richest vegetation type. The open-access file ”GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks” and the web tool “GrassPlot Diversity Explorer” are now available online (https://edgg.org/databases/GrasslandDiversityExplorer) and provide more insights into species richness patterns in the Palaearctic open habitats. Conclusions: The GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks provide high-quality data on species richness in open habitat types across the Palaearctic. These benchmark data can be used in vegetation ecology, macroecology, biodiversity conservation and data quality checking. While the amount of data in the underlying GrassPlot database and their spatial coverage are smaller than in other extensive vegetation-plot databases, species recordings in GrassPlot are on average more complete, making it a valuable complementary data source in macroecology

sPlotOpen:an environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots

Abstract Motivation: Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called ‘sPlot’, compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. Here, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring. Main types of variable contained: Vegetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co-occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. sPlotOpen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. Besides geographical location, date, plot size, biome, elevation, slope, aspect, vegetation type, naturalness, coverage of various vegetation layers, and source dataset, plot-level data also include community-weighted means and variances of 18 plant functional traits from the TRY Plant Trait Database. Spatial location and grain: Global, 0.01–40,000 m². Time period and grain: 1888–2015, recording dates. Major taxa and level of measurement: 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot-level records. Software format: Three main matrices (.csv), relationally linked