Variability and classification of Carpathian calcium-rich fens: breaking the state borders

0545694 - BÚ 2022 RIV CZ eng J - Journal Article
Hájek, M. - Hájková, Petra - Goia, I. - Dítě, D. - Plášek, V.
Variability and classification of Carpathian calcium-rich fens: breaking the state borders.
Preslia. Roč. 93, č. 3 (2021), s. 203-235. ISSN 0032-7786. E-ISSN 0032-7786
Institutional support: RVO:67985939
Keywords : calcareous fens * semi-supervised and unsupervised classification * Western Carpathians
OECD category: Plant sciences, botany
Impact factor: 2.233, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Open access
http://www.preslia.cz/doi/preslia.2021.203.html

Calcareous and rich fens harbour the unique biodiversity of plants and invertebrates. They are extremely sensitive to landscape changes because of their island nature. In the Carpathians, they are still well-preserved, but their number has substantially decreased. Knowledge about their variability and classification into vegetation units, a baseline for efficient nature conservancy, is still insufficient in the Eastern Carpathians, where phytosociology has used different methodologies than in the Western Carpathians. It has resulted in artificial boundaries in the distribution of vegetation types and low compatibility with modern European habitat classification schemes. Here we gathered a large set of vegetation-plot records, sampled by the unified sampling protocol.The aim was to uncover the principal variation in compositional data, identify resulting clusters with the hitherto reported vegetation units, and create the unified classification system adjusted for the entire Carpathian territory. The final 10 clusters essentially correspond with phytosociological associations, with five of them being reported for the first time for Romania. These vegetation units were well-separated in the principal coordinate analysis. Our analyses supported the classification of fen grasslands into both the tufa-forming and the peatforming ones, belonging to different associations and Habitat Directive units, both occurring in all countries including Romania. The final unified classification system will make Carpathian vegetation types of rich and calcareousfens applicable to continental habitat classification schemes.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0322367