Composition and Diversity of Lawn Flora in Differently Managed Village Yards – A Case Study from Southwestern Hungary

Abstract

Traditionally managed village yards have been disappearing from the CentralEuropean countryside. Their lawn flora is likely to provide a unique habitat for many plants that are adapted to this environment. Composition of lawn flora was investigated in differently managed village yards (i.e., regularly mown and regularly trampled yards, poultry yards, paved yards) in southwestern Hungary. The main goal of the study was to detect the impacts of these different management regimes on the composition and diversity of the vegetation. In total, 240 1-m 2 plots were sampled in 60 yards ranging from 80 m 2 to 5000 m 2 . In the redundancy analysis, eight significant variables (degree of southness, slope, age, total size of yards; mowing, trampling and grazing regime; and the number of dogs) explained 16% of the total variation in species data. The most diverse flora across yards was detected in the paved ones, and their stands also proved to be the most compositionally distinctive. In contrast, presence of domestic animals can contribute to local species loss as well as to a decrease in within-yard-type variability. These results highlight the importance of certain anthropogenic disturbances in maintaining high plant diversity, but also underline the crucial role of small-scale land management practices in rural environments.

On the ecology of lawn communities in the cities of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia

“…Ecological studies of lawns and their constituent grass mix tures in the Rus sian Federation and abroad are not nu me rous. They focus mainly on the flora and ve ge ta tion of lawn com mu nities (Thompson et al 2004, Stavretović & Jovanović 2005, Anishchenko 2005, Pal et al 2013, Ishbirdina et al 2019, Anishchenko et al 2019, Novaković et al 2020, the sta bility of lawn grass mix tures and their composition (Düb bern de Souza et al 2020, Wolski et al 2020, the im pact of various en vi ron men tal and anthropogenic factors (light, irrigation, trampling, soil conditions, etc. ) on the du ra bility of lawn carpets, as well as va rious issues of ma nage ment and the role of lawns in urban eco systems (Lap tev 1983, Tyuldyukov et al 2002, Petrova 2007, Ani shchen ko et al 2011, Vizirskaya et al 2013, Lukinykh 2013, Gladkov et al 2016, Chollet et al 2018, Watson et al 2019, Foti et al 2020, Parra et al 2020, Unruh et al 2020.…”

Floral and phytosociological diversity of selected lawns in the city of Szczecin

“…In the present work, we have assumed that over the years, lawn surfaces are gradually becoming weaker, which may be due to the occurrence of negative anthropogenic factors, including, among others, mowing the sward, and compacting the soil structure by trampling and fouling [Thompson et al 2004, Trzaskowska 2011, Trzaskowska and Adamiec 2012, Pal et al 2013.…”