Relevant habitats neglected by the Directive 92/43 EEC: the contribution of Vegetation Science for their reappraisal in Sicily

Field investigation carried out by the Sicilian botanists in the last 20 years enabled them to identify eight habitat types of high biogeographic and conservation interest, neglected by the Directive 92/43, which deserve ad hoc conservation measures. For each of these habitats, a syntaxonomic interpretation of the corresponding plant communities, their main ecological, physiognomic and syndynamic traits and a list of diagnostic species are provided. Their classification into the macrotypes listed in the Annex I of the Directive 92/43 and the respective correspondence in EUNIS habitat classification are proposed. The habitats here described integrate those already proposed by the Italian Botanical Society, with the hope of an adequate recognition at national at supranational level.

CHECKLIST OF VEGETATION CLASSES OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: HOW MUCH DO WE KNOW?

UDK: 581.5(497.6) The beginnings of vegetation research of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), according to Braun-Blanquet’s approach, date back to early 1930s, culminated in the period of 60s-70s, and declined until the end of 20th century. Twenty years after the war B&H vegetation science hasn’t still achieved the pre-war level. The starting point for the preparation of the checklist of vegetation classes was the vegetation database of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which contains 6823 relevés, which were digitized and imported in TURBOVEG database for storage of large relevé datasets. Total of 4780 relevés were collected from 123 references (2906 regularly published, 1331 from grey literature and 543 from manuscripts), while 2043 are unpublished relevés, mainly recorded by the team of the Department of Forest Ecology at the Faculty of Forestry in Banja Luka. Analysis of this dataset suggests that vegetation of Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises 60 classes. According to the overviews of vegetation of Bosnia and Herzegovina published so far, the vegetation dominated by vascular plants numbers 33 and 39 classes respectively. This discrepancy can be partially attributed to different syntaxonomic concepts used in these overviews compared to the latest Checklist compiled at the European level (EuroVegChecklist), which was our guideline, but also to uneven level of elaboration of different vegetation types and geographical regions in B&H. Six classes of forest vegetation share almost 60% of the total number of relevés, while another six classes of various grasslands take another 25%. The other 15% is divided among the rest of 48 classes. Some of the classes without relevés are, in our own opinion, present in B&H, but still need to be confirmed, while the others, even though mentioned in literature, couldn’t be confirmed at the field after extensive research.

Shedding light on typical species: implications for habitat monitoring

Habitat monitoring in Europe is regulated by Article 17 of the Habitats Directive, which suggests the use of typical species to habitat conservation status. Yet, the Directive uses the term “typical” species but does not provide a definition, either for its use in reporting or for its use in impact assessments. To address the issue, an online workshop was organized by the Italian Society for Vegetation Science (SISV) to shed light on the diversity of perspectives regarding the different concepts of typical species, and to discuss the possible implications for habitat monitoring. To this aim, we inquired 73 people with a very different degree of expertise in the field of vegetation science by means of a tailored survey composed of six questions. We analysed the data using Pearson's Chi-squared test to verify that the answers diverged from a random distribution and checked the effect of the degree of experience of the surveyees on the results. We found that most of the surveyees agreed on the use of the phytosociological method for habitat monitoring and of the diagnostic and characteristic species to evaluate the structural and functional conservation status of habitats. With this contribution, we shed light on the meaning of “typical” species in the context of habitat monitoring.

Terrestrial biomes: a conceptual review

Aims: We attempt to review the conceptualisation, science and classification of biomes and propose to limit the definition of a biome to potential natural vegetation as determined by general environmental variables. Results: Classifying the distribution and abundance of vegetation types on earth has been a central tenet of vegetation science since Humboldt’s classic studies in the early 1800s. While the importance of such classifications only grows in the wake of extreme changes, this review demonstrates that there are many fundamentally different approaches to define biomes, hitherto with limited efforts for unifying concepts among disciplines. Consequently, there is little congruence between the resulting maps, and widely used biome maps fail to delimit areas with consistent climate profiles. Conclusions: Gaps of knowledge are directly related to research avenues, and suggestions for defining and classifying biomes, as well as modelling their distributions, are provided. These suggestions highlight the primary importance of the climate, argue against using anthropogenic drivers to define biomes and stabilize the concept of biome to escape from the current polysemy. The last two decades have seen an emergence of new approaches, e.g., using satellite imagery to determine growth patterns of vegetation, leading to defining biomes based on the objective, observable qualities of the vegetation based on current reality.

Vegetation Classification and Survey: the first year

We report on the completed first volume of Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), which included ten Research Papers, six Short Database Reports, two Long Database Reports, two Forum Papers and one Report. We highlight three outstanding papers as examples of contributions of which we would like to see more in the future. Finally, we announce a new article type “VCS Methods” and report about the status of two upcoming Special Collections. Lists of colleagues who served as reviewers or linguistic editors in 2020 are included in appendices. Abbreviations: IAVS = International Association for Vegetation Science; VCS = Vegetation Classification and Survey.

Development of database “North Eurasia forest vegetation” in Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity RAS

Published information about databases of digitized geobotanical relevés promotes cooperation between researchers who analyze vegetation biodiversity, exchange of used data and, therefore, the representativeness of research. The article provides an overview of the history, how the database of forest relevés was created, and considers the tasks in the solution of which it was used. The current stage of work is characterized: the improvement of the database structure, features of the stored information, replenishment of the database, the issues of administration and organization of cooperation. Based on the analysis of modern trends in vegetation science and taking into account the peculiarities of the information stored in the database, actual scientific problems are formulated, in the work on which the use of the base is promising, and technical tasks that need to be solved.