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Vegetation shifts in boreal ombrotrophic peatlands following road construction

Posted on October 24, 2026October 25, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Ariane Bouffard, Marie Larocque, Mathieu Vaillancourt, Michelle Garneau & Monique Poulin

Road crossing a peatland in the Côte-Nord region, Quebec, Canada. The shift in vegetation can be seen from the sky, as in this picture, where shrubs are forming what resembles two hedges along both sides of the road.

The IAVS journals are looking for reviewers and new members of the Editorial Board

Posted on October 8, 2026October 9, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Jürgen Dengler (on behalf of all VCS Chief Editors) and Francesco Maria Sabatini (on behalf of all JVS/AVS Chief Editors)

The recent cover images of the three peer-reviewed journals of IAVS: JVS, AVS and VCS

Journal of Vegetation Science (JVS), Applied Vegetation Science (AVS) and Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) – three journals joined in their mission to advance vegetation science and to provide the best possible service to our authors and the highest-quality papers to our readers.…

Of Brooms and Boundaries: That Day I Met David Hume

Posted on October 8, 2026October 9, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Riccardo Guarino

Allan Ramsay, portrait of David Hume (1766); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, UK. Photo credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This post refers to the article Broom-dominated shrublands of Sicily: revisiting the syntaxonomy of the Cytisetea scopario-striati at the south-eastern margin of their range, by Riccardo Guarino, Orazio Caldarella, Alessandro Silvestre Gristina, Corrado Marcenò, and Lorenzo Gianguzzi, published in Vegetation Classification and Survey (https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS.183815…

VCS in the third quarter of 2026 and Editors’ Choice

Posted on October 8, 2026October 9, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Jürgen Dengler (on behalf of the VCS Chief Editor)

The newly described shrub association *Erico arboreae-Cytisetum infesti* from the Mediterranean island of Sicily (Photo: L. Gianguzzi; from Guarino et al. 2026).

In the third quarter of its 7^th volume, Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) has published four articles (see list below).…

[Deadline extended] Invitation to contribute to a Special Feature on “Palaearctic grasslands: global change, conservation, management and restoration” in Applied Vegetation Science

Posted on September 10, 2026September 10, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Jürgen Dengler (Chair of the Guest Editors)

In conjunction with the Eurasian Grassland Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, in July 2026, the IAVS Working Group EDGG (https://edgg.org/) is organising a Special Feature on global change and applied topics in grasslands throughout the Palaearctic biogeographic realm in the journal Applied Vegetation Science (AVS).…

Satellite-based mapping of South Manchurian mixed forests highlights critical conservation needs

Posted on September 4, 2026September 4, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Violetta D. Dzizyurova, Sergey V. Dudov, Kirill A. Korznikov, Tatyana Ya. Petrenko, Mikhail Yu. Grishchenko & Pavel V. Krestov

The South Manchurian mixed forests: (a) Landscape view from a drone; (b) Representative stand of the South Manchurian mixed forest community; (c) species of the lower tree layer – heartleaf hornbeam (*Carpinus cordata*); (d) Canopy architecture featuring emergent Korean pine (*Pinus koraiensis*); (e) Understory shrub; (f) Individual Manchurian fir tree (*Abies holophylla*).

Wind Effects on Tundra Vegetation: Insights From Natural Windbreaks in the Sub-Antarctic

Posted on August 24, 2026August 24, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Nicola Marneweck, Leandri de Kock, Janine Schoombie, Michelle Greve and Peter C. le Roux

Large boulders can act as natural windbreaks present on the chronically windy sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Photo credit: Leandri de Kock

When we think about climate, we usually think of temperature and rainfall.…

Translation of the Braun-Blanquet scale to percent in TURBOVEG can bias diversity metrics

Posted on August 19, 2026August 24, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post was provided by Jürgen Dengler, Iwona Dembicz & Łukasz Kozub

Visualisation of different ways of back-transforming 7-step Braun-Blanquet scales to percent for numerical analyses. It is evident that for cover values below 3% (0.5 on the log10 scale), the back-translation of TURBOVEG (yellow) yields systematically too high values, while the two mid-point translations partly over- and partly underestimate the true values (Image taken from Dengler et al.

Call to contribute to a Special Collection “Vegetation of the Balkan Peninsula” in Vegetation Classification and Survey

Posted on August 1, 2026August 1, 2026 by David Zeleny

Prepared by Jürgen Dengler, Erwin Bergmeier and Urban Šilc

Plants, vegetation types and landscapes of the Balkan Peninsula (Photos by E. Bergmeier, J. Dengler and U. Šilc)

We are pleased to announce the upcoming Special Collection on the vegetation of the Balkan Peninsula in IAVS’ gold open access journal Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS).…