Mediterranean coastal dune systems: Which abiotic factors have the most influence on plant communities?

Ruocco, Matteo; Bertoni, Duccio; Sarti, Giovanni; Ciccarelli, Daniela

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2014.08.019

Cited by 85 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The most represented family on the studied dunes was the Poaceae with four species, followed by the Asteraceae with three species. These results are similar to those of Ruocco et al (2014), who reported that the same families were most abundant on Mediterranean dunes. According to the MRPP test, ground vegetation zonation was prevalent on the studied dunes, with indicator species present for all zones.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…There have been numerous studies concerning coastal dunes and their vegetation, growth conditions and vegetation changes induced by disturbances (Kutiel et al 1999;Kooijman and Besse 2002;Ensign et al 2006;Isermann 2008;Brunbjerg et al 2015;Ciccarelli 2015;Pinna et al 2015). Topography, human influence, and soil conditions such as pH, nutrients and moisture are important factors that affect ground vegetation in dune areas (Isermann 2005;Ruocco et al 2014;Sewerniak et al 2017). In Estonia, Ilves (1966), Eltermann and Raukas (1966), Raukas (1968), Örd (1972, 1973) and Mandre et al (2008) studied the aspects of fixed dune history and soils in the Rannametsa dune area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunes

Tilk¹,

Tullus²,

Ots³

2017

Silva Fenn.

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Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunesTilk M., Tullus T., Ots K. (2017). Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunes. Silva Fennica vol. 51 no. 3 article id 6986. 18 p. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.6986 Highlights• Factors affecting the species richness, composition and horizontal structure of vascular plants are related to dune topography, resulting in the differentiation of soils and therefore complexes of different microhabitats that are populated by various vascular plant species and causing vegetation zonation. AbstractDifferent environmental factors were studied to determine which factors influence the species richness, composition and structure of vascular plants in Pinus sylvestris L. forests in a fixed dune landscape in south-western Estonia. In addition to site topographic factors, different environmental parameters were investigated. Thirty-four vascular plant species were recorded in 232 quadrats. The most abundant species was Vaccinium vitis-idaea L., which was in 82.8% of quadrats, followed by Vaccinium myrtillus L. (74.1%), Melampyrum pratense L. (71.1%) and Deschampsia flexuosa (L.) Trin. (69.8%). The multiple response permutation procedure (MRPP) showed considerable differences in species composition at the bottoms of dunes compared with that on the slopes and at the tops of dunes. Indicator species analysis (ISA) determined species exhibited characteristics specific to zone: V. myrtillus had the highest indicator value at the bottoms of dunes; Calluna vulgaris L., at the tops. Soils were Haplic Podzols, and the presence of humus horizon depended on zone. Soil conditions on the dunes were variable and site specific, in general, soils at the bottoms of the dunes were more acidic and moist compared with those of the slopes and tops of the dunes, and the nutrient content decreased toward the dune tops. According to non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and linear mixed model analyses, species coverage, composition and richness were controlled by site-specific factors such as absolute height, location and aspect of the quadrat on the dune; soil nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus contents; soil pH and moisture; light conditions; and the thickness of the litter horizon.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunes

Tilk¹,

Tullus²,

Ots³

2017

Silva Fenn.

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“…We projected the potential distribution of each of the 82 coastal species individually using SDM with the BIOMOD2 library in R (Thuiller et al, 2009). We considered a 250 Â 250 m resolution using six environmental variables expected to be important for coastal plant species (Fenu et al, 2013;Forey et al, 2008;Ruocco et al, 2014): two uncorrelated (r < 0.3) climate variables available in the WorldClim database (Hijmans et al, 2005) i.e. the minimum temperature of the coldest month (BIO6) and the precipitation of the warmest quarter (BIO18), one soil variable reflecting strong pH gradient, the annual sun exposure, the ground slope, used as a proxy for water availability, and a variable of maritime influence, used as a proxy for salinity (ex.…”

Section: Species Distribution Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing conservation areas for coastal plant diversity under increasing urbanization

Doxa

Albert

Leriche

et al. 2017

Journal of Environmental Management

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Coastal urban expansion will continue to drive further biodiversity losses, if conservation targets for coastal ecosystems are not defined and met. Prioritizing areas for future protected area networks is thus an urgent task in such urbanization-threatened ecosystems. Our aim is to quantify past and future losses of coastal vegetation priority areas due to urbanization and assess the effectiveness of the existing protected area network for conservation. We conduct a prioritization analysis, based on 82 coastal plants, including common and IUCN red list species, in a highly-urbanized but biotically diverse region, in South-Eastern France. We evaluate the role of protected areas, by taking into account both strict and multi-use areas. We assess the impact of past and future urbanization on high priority areas, by combining prioritization analyses and urbanization models. We show that half of the highly diverse areas have already been lost due to urbanization. Remaining top priority areas are also among the most exposed to future urban expansion. The effectiveness of the existing protected area (PA) network is only partial. While strict PAs coincide well with top priority areas, they only represent less than one third of priority areas. The effectiveness of multi-use PAs, such as the Natura 2000 network, also remains limited. Our approach highlights the impact of urbanization on plant conservation targets. By modelling urbanization, we manage to identify those areas where protection could be more efficient to limit further losses. We suggest to use our approach in the future to expand the PA network in order to achieve the 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets.

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“…Halla in South Korea and Hawaii or the Galapagos. Corralejo and Maspalomas are important coastal sand dune systems in Europe, as they contain a large degree of biodiversity [ 46 ]. The importance of studying these ecosystems is their similarity with other Mediterranean, temperate or tropical parts of the world: Tuscany (Italy), Doñana National Park (Spain), as well as other parts of the world, such as Parangtritis (Java, Indonesia), Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, NE Queensland, the tropical coast of Brazil, the West African coast, Cuba, the Galapagos islands, the West Indies, Cox’s Bazaar (Bangladesh), Hawaii, Ghana, the coast of India or Christmas Island [ 47 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fusion of High Resolution Multispectral Imagery in Vulnerable Coastal and Land Ecosystems

Ibarrola-Ulzurrun

Gonzalo-Martín

Marcello

et al. 2017

Sensors

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Ecosystems provide a wide variety of useful resources that enhance human welfare, but these resources are declining due to climate change and anthropogenic pressure. In this work, three vulnerable ecosystems, including shrublands, coastal areas with dunes systems and areas of shallow water, are studied. As far as these resources' reduction is concerned, remote sensing and image processing techniques could contribute to the management of these natural resources in a practical and cost-effective way, although some improvements are needed for obtaining a higher quality of the information available. An important quality improvement is the fusion at the pixel level. Hence, the objective of this work is to assess which pansharpening technique provides the best fused image for the different types of ecosystems. After a preliminary evaluation of twelve classic and novel fusion algorithms, a total of four pansharpening algorithms was analyzed using six quality indices. The quality assessment was implemented not only for the whole set of multispectral bands, but also for the subset of spectral bands covered by the wavelength range of the panchromatic image and outside of it. A better quality result is observed in the fused image using only the bands covered by the panchromatic band range. It is important to highlight the use of these techniques not only in land and urban areas, but a novel analysis in areas of shallow water ecosystems. Although the algorithms do not show a high difference in land and coastal areas, coastal ecosystems require simpler algorithms, such as fast intensity hue saturation, whereas more heterogeneous ecosystems need advanced algorithms, as weighted wavelet 'à trous' through fractal dimension maps for shrublands and mixed ecosystems. Moreover, quality map analysis was carried out in order to study the fusion result in each band at the local level. Finally, to demonstrate the performance of these pansharpening techniques, advanced Object-Based (OBIA) support vector machine classification was applied, and a thematic map for the shrubland ecosystem was obtained, which corroborates wavelet 'à trous' through fractal dimension maps as the best fusion algorithm for this ecosystem.

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Mediterranean coastal dune systems: Which abiotic factors have the most influence on plant communities?

Cited by 85 publications

References 63 publications

Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunes

Effects of environmental factors on the species richness, composition and community horizontal structure of vascular plants in Scots pine forests on fixed sand dunes

Prioritizing conservation areas for coastal plant diversity under increasing urbanization

Fusion of High Resolution Multispectral Imagery in Vulnerable Coastal and Land Ecosystems

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