Category: Plain language summary

Should we estimate plant cover in percent or on ordinal scales?

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Prepared by Jürgen Dengler & Iwona Dembicz

How much does species x cover in the plot? Two vegetation scientists estimating plant covers in a steppe of Southern Ukraine during the 15th EDGG Field Workshop. (Photo Credit: Jürgen Dengler).

Vegetation-plot records (relevés) containing a full list of species with cover information on each of them are the main source of information in vegetation science.…

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Arid community responses to nitrogen and carbon addition depend on dominant species traits and are decoupled between above- and below-ground biomass

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Prepared by Sofía Campana, María Fernanda Reyes and Martín R. Aguiar

Graphical abstract of the paper. At the top-left, there is also a picture of the Patagonian steppe (Chubut province, Argentina), where we conducted the experiment to test the individual and combined effects of soil C and N addition on the above- and below-ground biomass accumulation of the perennial grass community.
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Modeling the potential distribution of floristic assemblages of high Andean wetlands dominated by Juncaceae and Cyperaceae in the Argentine Puna

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Prepared by Elvira Casagranda & Andrea E. Izquierdo

View of the “Acay Sur” vega during one of the vegetation sampling campaigns. Photo credits: A.E. Izquierdo

Plant communities are the main biological factor determining the functional ecosystem processes of the systems. In the Puna, a highland desert from the Andes, vegas are important wetlands representing real oases in the arid soil matrix.…

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Does above-average rainfall stimulate a recruitment pulse in semi-arid woodlands of southeastern Australia?

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Prepared by Sally A. Kenny and Claire Moxham

Seedlings, young plants and mature trees within a Slender Cypress Pine semi-arid woodland at Wyperfeld National Park, southeastern Australia. Photo credit: Sally Kenny

Without management intervention, semi-arid woodlands are at risk of decline in southeastern Australia.…

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Biomass fine-scale variation is predictive of functional composition and diversity in grazed grassland

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Prepared by Nicolas Caram, Felipe Casalás, Marcelo O. Wallau, Pablo Soca, Valério D. Pillar, Monica Cadenazzi & Pablo Boggiano

Sampling at the Experimental Station “Bernardo Rosengurtt” of Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad de la República (32°21’59” S, 54°26’37” W). Photo credit: Felipe Casalás

The adjustment of livestock number per unit area affects the aboveground biomass and its variation in space and time, which is a tool in grassland management for biodiversity conservation and livestock production.…

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Climatic definitions of the world’s terrestrial biomes

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Prepared by Javier Loidi, Gonzalo Navarro-Sánchez and Denys Vynokurov

Domains, Ecozones, Biomes and Subbiomes of the Earth. Distribution of the 20 subbiomes across the world. 1a Polar tundra, 1b Tundras of the temperate mountains in cryoro belt, 1c Tundras of the tropical mountains in cryoro belt, 2a Lowland boreal Taiga, 2b Forests and shrublands of the temperate oro belt, 3a Temperate deciduous forests, 4a Lauroid evergreen forest of the lowlands, 4b Conifer coastal forests, 4c Tropical montane cloud lauroid and conifer evergreen forest, 5a Oceanic sclerophyllous-microphyllous evergreen forests and shrublands (Mediterranean), 5b Continental scrub and woodlands, 5c Patagonian shrubland, 6a Forest-steppe, 6b Grass-steppe, 7a Cold deserts and semi-deserts, 7b Temperate deserts and semi-deserts, 7c Warm deserts and semi-deserts, 8a Tropical xeric shrublands and woodlands, 8b Tropical pluviseasonal forests and woodlands, 9a Tropical rain forests.
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Ellenberg-type indicator values for European vascular plant species

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Prepared by Lubomír Tichý, Irena Axmanová and Milan Chytrý

Recommended area for safe application of the harmonized European dataset of indicator values (image from the original article).

The system of indicator values for vascular plants proposed by the famous German plant ecologist Heinz Ellenberg has been widely used in Europe for the bioindication of environmental conditions.…

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Controlling the abundance of a native invasive plant does not affect species richness or functional diversity of wet grasslands

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By Marie-Therese Krieger, Julia Ditton, Harald Albrecht, Barteline Martina Baaij, Johannes Kollmann & Leonardo Henrique Teixeira

The yellow flowering marsh ragwort (Jacobaea aquatica) contains toxic components making it a problematic plant in grasslands. Photo credit: Marie-Therese Krieger

Marsh ragwort (Jacobaea aquatica) is a poisonous plant naturally occurring in pre-alpine wet grasslands in Central Europe.…

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