Human impact on sandy beach vegetation along the southeastern Adriatic coast

Abstract

We compared the zonation of vegetation and connectivity of coastal plant communities between two distinct areas, one in Montenegro and another in Albania, that differ in terms of human impact, mainly through tourism activities. Transect plots were used to gather data about plant cover and communities, their zonation and connectivity. For description of communities multivariate methods were used and for distribution zonation we used gamma connectivity and richness of boundaries. We found that the transects of vegetation zonation from Albania, with better preserved sites, were richer in the number of boundaries, with more varied combinations of boundaries and the pattern of zonation was also more diverse. On the other hand, there were two plant communities found only in Montenegro. The more impacted transects on the disturbed beaches from Montenegro were also more unidirectional from sea to hinterland but with less ideal zonation. Plant communities from Albania were distributed more straightforwardly but contacts between them were in both directions. The less disturbed beach had zonation very similar to potential vegetation, while plant communities of the touristic beach were fragmented or even substituted by replacement communities. Coastal dune systems in Albania are still well preserved, therefore monitoring and protection measures are recommended.

Coastal sand dune vegetation of Velika plaža (Montenegro)

“…In Croatia sand dunes can be found fragmentarily in a few places with more or less depauperated plant composition of typical sand dune associations (Horvatić 1963, Trinajstić 1989b, Trinajstić and Jasprica 1998, Šilc et al 2016b. Horvatić (1963) reports Agropyretum mediterraneum, Euphorbio-Glaucietum petrosum, and also Cyperetum flavescentis and Cypero-Paspaletum distichi.…”

Trade-offs between sampling effort and data quality in habitat monitoring

“…The transect method has been widely used to monitor the habitat conservation status (e.g. Ciccarelli 2014;Prisco et al 2016;Šilc et al 2016) in coastal dune systems, where factors such as wind intensity, nutrient availability and soil moisture change sharply from the coastline inlands (Maun 2009), thereby defining a complex mosaic of habitat types. Furthermore, the method has been recently recommended as the best tool to monitor the environmental and biotic heterogeneity in complex vegetation mosaics (Angelini et al 2016;Gigante et al 2016a).…”

Distribution of alien species along sand dune plant communities zonation

“…Such specific and highly dynamic environments, governed by three interacting factors: waves, tides and sand particle size, are inhabited by a biota with a high degree of specialization (2,3). Although psammophilous vegetation is known to be highly resistant to natural disturbances, it has been shown to be very sensitive to human-mediated disturbances, such as recreational seashore activities, beach cleaning, nourishment and restoration, pollution, exploitation for fisheries, biological invasions, coastal development and engineering, mining and climate change (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9). In relation to Velika plaža, illegal dumping, nonplanned sand exploitation, urbanization and non-sustainable tourist development are recognized as serious threats to sand dune ecosystems (33).…”