Richness of vascular flora in Lublin city, east Poland, under different urban pressure

Abstract

Cities are commonly described as mosaics of habitats with increasing degrees of human impact along a gradient from the outskirts to the centers, which may lead to both an increase and a decline in species richness and diversity. Data on species richness in the city of Lublin had been collected in a model transect containing 20 1-km 2 study squares. We used ordination methods correspondence analysis (CA) and redundancy analysis (RDA), Spearman's rank correlation, forward selection, and the Monte Carlo permutation test to determine which factors have the greatest effect on species richness in various types of city habitats. There were 795 vascular plant species in squares, with predominance of native (540) rather that alien (255) species. The greatest richness was reported in the city center, where residential areas border railway infrastructure and extensively cultivated agricultural areas. The lowest number of species was found in peripheral areas overgrown by seminatural vegetation. The main factor determining species richness and flora quality in the city is human impact. Species richness of native and alien plants is influenced by the landscape structure created by land-use and land-cover variability, hemeroby level, and the period under urban pressure.

Anthropogenic transformation of the flora of urbanoecosystems of the Northern Pryazov territories

“…Our results differ from the studies of regional natural flora and in the urban floras of the temperate zone (Burda, 1991(Burda, , 1997Sudnik-Wójcikowska and Moysiyenko, 2011;Kolomiychuk, 2012;Rysiak and Czarnecka, 2017). There is a prevalence of herbaceous monocarpic plants in Henichesk, whereas the prevalence of herbaceous polycarpic plants is specific for the above-mentioned flora.…”

“…It shows that studied flora have a plain landscape features. According to other researchers of urban flora (Sal'nikov and Pilipenk, 2005;Knapp et al, 2010;Rysiak and Czarnecka, 2017) bushes and semibushes are among the least stable groups against the effects of urbanization. Predominance of monocarpics is caused by the invasion of adventive plants -there are 179 species of adventive monocarpics (54.7% of the total) in the studied urban flora.…”

Green infrastructure: innovative use of indigenous ecosystems and knowledge

“…The main factor determining species richness and floral quality in cities is human impact (Rysiak and Czarnecka 2017). The highest number of species (including alien species) per square kilometer in urban areas is found in the transitional zones between the city center and rural areas, where the mosaic of land use types is most heterogeneous.…”