Studies on taxonomic diversity of plant communities and modeling its potential distribution in Yazılı Canyon Nature Park, Turkey

Abstract

Aim : Methodology :Results : Interpretation :The objective of the present study was to generate taxonomic diversity of plant communities and modeling its potential distribution in Yazılı Canyon Nature Park (Turkey).In the present study, taxonomic plant diversity were measured from the data obtained from 107 sampling plots and then modeled to visualize its' potential distribution by using regression tree technique (RTT) across the Yazılı Canyon Nature Park situated in the Mediterranean region, Turkey.Taxonomic diversity values were between 3.427 and 4.459. The variables made up the regression tree model were slope (%), distance to stream, solar illumination, altitude and aspect. The explained variances of tree models were unexpectedly found low with the values of 31.05% and 24.21% for training and testing data. Even though tree model does not have high explanation ability, it was visualized to see the potential distribution of the taxonomic diversity in the study area. The distribution map illustrated that the places immediate environment to Yazılı stream and highly very steep places of the canyon has more taxonomic diversity values than its' other parts. This result was found meaningful since those places are more humid and include the plant species having more taxonomic distances from each other compared to its' other parts.

How to determine best diversity ordering method for a community data set?

“…are dominant species in the study area. The nature park is rich in endemic species with twenty-four endemic plant taxa (Özkan and Süel, 2008;Mert and Özkan, 2017). During the field survey in Yazili Canyon Nature Park, plant species composition of each plot was recorded using the Braun-Blanquet scores.…”