Habitat red-listing: the pattern of spatial occupancy does matter.

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58

th

_{Annual Symposium}

of the International Association

for Vegetation Science:

Understanding broad-scale

vegetation patterns

Abstracts

19 – 24 July 2 015, Brno, Czech Republic

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58 th

_{Annual Symposium}

of the International Association

for Vegetation Science

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Edited by

Milan Chytrý, David Zelený & Eva Hettenbergerová

Masaryk University, Brno, 2015

58

th

_{Annual Symposium}

of the International Association

for Vegetation Science:

Understanding broad-scale

vegetation patterns

19 – 24 July 2 015, Brno, Czech Republic

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Local Organizing Committee Milan Chytrý Michal Hájek Radim Hédl Tomáš Herben Eva Hettenbergerová Soňa Hroudová Jan Lepš Zdeňka Lososová Jan Roleček Lubomír Tichý David Zelený

IAVS Advisory Committee

Martin Diekmann (Germany) – IAVS President

Robert K. Peet (USA) – IAVS Vice President and Chair of the Publications Committee Michael Palmer (USA) – IAVS Vice President and Chair of the Membership Committee Javier Loidi (Spain) – IAVS Vice President and Chair of the Meetings Committee Alicia Acosta (Italy) – IAVS Vice President

Valério Pillar (Brazil) – IAVS Vice President Susan Wiser (New Zealand) – IAVS Secretary Stefan Bradham (USA) – IAVS Administrator

Meelis Pärtel (Estonia) – Chair of the Chief Editors of the IAVS Journals Alessandra Fidelis (Brazil) – Chair of the IAVS Global Sponsorship Committee Joop H.J. Schaminée (The Netherlands) – Chair of the IAVS Awards Committee Kerry Woods (USA) – Chair of the IAVS Ethics Committee

Ladislav Mucina (Australia) – Organizer of the IAVS Annual Symposium 2014 John Du Vall Hay (Brazil) – Organizer of the IAVS Annual Symposium 2016 Anne Bonis (France) – Organizer of the European Vegetation Survey Meeting 2015

Organized by

Vegetation Science Group and Mire Ecology Group Department of Botany and Zoology

Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

in cooperation with Ta-Service, Brno, Czech Republic

The abstracts were evaluated by

Alicia Acosta, Milan Chytrý, Michal Hájek, John Du Vall Hay, Radim Hédl, Tomáš Herben, Jan Lepš, Zdeňka Lososová, Ladislav Mucina, Michael Palmer, Meelis Pärtel, Lubomír Tichý & David Zelený

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134 58th_{IAVS Symposium, Brno, Czech Republic, 19 – 24 July 2015} ₅₈th_{IAVS Symposium, Brno, Czech Republic, 19 – 24 July 2015} ₁₃₅

Gigante D.

Poster D-11

Habitat red-listing: the pattern of spatial occupancy does matter

Session: Vegetation science serving nature conservation

Daniela Gigante 1,_{*, Bruno Foggi}2_{, Roberto Venanzoni}1_{, Daniele Viciani}2_{, Edy Fantinato}3_&

Gabriella Buffa 3

1_{Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnologies, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;} 2_{Department of Biology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy;}3_{Centre for Estuarine and Marine}

Studies, DAIS, University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Venice, Italy * Presenting author: daniela.gigante@unipg.it

In terrestrial systems, the plant community concept has acquired a central role in land planning as a key approach for biodiversity conservation above the species level. In this frame, Red Lists of habitats and plant communities are increasingly arising interest at the global level and also in Europe (see, e.g., Rodwell et al. 2013). Starting with the analysis of recently proposed protocols for the red-listing of habitats and ecosystems, we discuss and test some emergent proper-ties of species assemblages, providing cues for reflection. Each habitat and vegetation type owns intrinsic, ecologically based, spatial features, which affect its spatial distribution in natural conditions. We hypothesize that the cogent relationship between vegetation and environmental heterogeneity accounts for an intrinsic property of any plant community, i.e. its “pattern of spa-tial occupancy” (pso), which might have a role in red-listing when applying quantitative criteria – above all those based on the “Area of Occurrence” (AOO). We discuss a model where the possible types of pso are referred to three basic types: areal, linear and point. Some case studies are then discussed using, as assessment units, the Annex I habitats as defined by the European Habitat Directive 92/43/EEC, whose description stems from plant communities and which are usually identified, and even mapped, based on phytosociological syntaxa. Data reported by the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea (2013) for Article 17, freely downloadable at http://www.sinanet.isprambiente.it/it/Reporting_Dir_Habitat, are here used to show how shape and size are intrinsic properties of habitats and plant communities, and how they might affect the results of red-listing assessment protocols. Our approach is proposed as a tool to discriminate among different broad categories of habitat types and optimize their assessment in red-listing processes, demonstrating by simple observations that habitats with linear and point distribution are more susceptible to bias in the evaluation of their threat status, compared to those with an areal pso. A habitat-tailored approach, e.g. adopting different grid-cell sizes and thresholds for the three main pso’s proposed here, might certainly reduce this risk for the assessments based on AOO.

References

Rodwell, J., Janssen, J., Gubbay, S. & Schaminée, J., 2013. Red List Assessment of European Habitat Types – A feasibility study. SC No. 070307/2012/624047/SER/B3, Report for the EC, DG Environment, Brussels.

Gillet F.

Oral presentation

Recent vegetation changes in montane grasslands: a diachronic resampling

study

Special session: Global change and vegetation dynamics: the use of historical data sets François Gillet 1,2,_{*, Leslie Mauchamp}1_{, Arnaud Mouly}1_{& Pierre-Marie Badot}1

1_{UMR 6249 Chrono-environnement, University of Franche-Comté – CNRS, Besançon,}

France; 2_{Ecological Systems Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Ecublens,}

Switzerland

* Presenting author: francois.gillet@univ-fcomte.fr

Recent studies highlighted a reduction of plant species richness in European permanent grass-lands during the last decades. Species-poorer contemporary communities are more dominated by mowing-tolerant grass species with high nutrient requirements. As an explanation to this change, an increase of nutrient supply due to agricultural practices and atmospheric depositions is commonly mentioned. In this resampling study, we investigate the recent changes in grass-land vegetation of the French Jura Mountains, a region with a long tradition of pastoralism. We compared the floristic composition of 150 grasslands recorded between 1990 and 2000 with new relevés made in 2012 on the same sites. We considered alpha taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity as well as ecological characteristics of the plant communities derived from Landolt ecological indicator values and Grime’s CSR strategies. A principal component analysis of the whole dataset revealed a significant general trend linked to the sampling year. Wilcoxon paired tests showed that contemporary communities are more dominated by grass species, present a higher tolerance to defoliation, a higher pastoral value and are more adapted to higher nutrient availability. Comparisons revealed a decrease of phylogenetic and functional diversity. However, we did not record any significant decrease of taxonomic diversity, but even a slight increase of local species richness. The intensity of changes in species composition, measured by Hellinger distances between pairs of relevés, was neither dependent on the time lag between the two surveys, the author of the first relevé nor its location or altitude. Nevertheless, the most important changes were observed in grasslands that previously presented low pastoral value, low grass cover, low tolerance to defoliation and high proportion of stress-tolerant species. This trend is likely linked to the intensification of grassland management reported in the region. A previous diachronic study based on the comparison of historical and recent phytosociological maps within the same region has shown that important changes happened since the 1950s, including a strong regression of mesotrophilous grasslands to the benefit of species-poor eutro-philous pastures and hayfields. Consequences for habitat conservation and ecosystem services in mountain areas are discussed, as well as methodological challenges of such resampling or remapping studies.