18 Results Found

Nature-based solutions are promising for climate adaptation and environmental management in urban areas, but urban conditions are stressful for vegetation. In particular, the interaction of drought and high temperatures may be detrimental. Guiding pl...

Green roofs and walls play an important role in promoting biodiversity, reducing the urban heat island effect and providing ecosystem services in urban areas. However, the conditions on green walls/roofs (low nutrient and organic matter content, drou...

Grasslands differ in many types depending on the diversity of climatic conditions and substrates. Due to the great wealth of species found in semi-natural grasslands, they conserve an essential part of the biodiversity of the European Union (EEC 43/9...

Bedrock geology is crucial in structuring alpine plant communities. Old studies mainly focused on the compositional differences between alpine plant communities on carbonate rocks and crystalline rocks, i.e., calcareous vs. siliceous vegetation. Incr...

European semi-dry grasslands are habitats of high conservation value. Therefore, research into the mechanisms of community assembly is important for their effective management. Using data from 76 vegetation plots of calcareous and acidic semi-dry gra...

Over the last decades, valuable natural areas considered as zones of silence and rest have been increasingly struggling with the problem of mass tourism. In this study, an investigation of the effect of visitors on the properties of vegetation of cal...

Global change threatens alpine biodiversity and its effects vary across habitat types and biogeographic regions. We explored vegetation changes over the last 20 years on two Mediterranean alpine calcareous grasslands in central Apennines (Italy): str...

We synthesize findings from a 7-year fragmentation experiment in species-rich, nutrient-poor, dry calcareous grasslands in the north-western Jura mountains, Switzerland. We used a standardized approach with 48 fragments (0.25–20.25 m2) and corr...

The Dolomites (European Alps) are a UNESCO World Heritage Site known to harbor distinctive communities of carabid beetles adapted to high-altitude environments, whose composition is shaped mainly by landform and habitat type. We aimed to assess the c...

High-mountain ecosystems are spots of plant diversity in which species composition and traits depict a long evolutionary history of species adaptation to steep environmental gradients. We investigated the main trends in plant species composition and...

Hyperspectral leaf-level reflectance data may enable the creation of taxonomic inventories and diversity assessments of grasslands, but little is known about the stability of species-specific spectral classes and discrimination models over the course...

The fragmentation of continuous habitats has significant consequences for species and for the functional diversity of plant and animal communities. Fragmentation effects can be indirect, can occur at different spatial scales and may vary over years....

The calcareous xerothermic grasslands of the Festuco-Brometea class are among the most endangered Natura 2000 sites in Europe. The greatest threats include a lack of grazing, secondary succession, and invasive alien and expansive native species. The...

Thymus apulus, a new species from the calcareous highland (Murge hill area) of Apulia and Basilicata, southern Italy, is described and illustrated. The new species belongs to Thymus sect. Hyphodromi, and has been confused in the past with T. striatus...

The present study focuses on the mosaic-like occurrences of patches of steppes and fore-steppes in the Pannonian forest-steppe zone. We present the current vegetation, which is maintained including by human landscape use, i.e., grazing and mowing. Th...

Research highlights: In the present survey we examined the sandy grasslands appearing in the steppe-forest-steppe vegetation in the central part of the Carpathian Basin along the Danube. Background and objectives: We aimed to answer the following que...

Fusion of remote sensing data often improves vegetation mapping, compared to using data from only a single source. The effectiveness of this fusion is subject to many factors, including the type of data, collection method, and purpose of the analysis...

This research is part of a Hungarian Research OTKA project that examines the vegetation of sandy grasslands along the Danube. During this study, Festuca wagneri and Festuca tomanii were identified as potentially suitable grass species for urban plant...