Plant communities as a tool for setting priorities in biodiversity conservation: a novel approach to Iberian aquatic vegetation

Benavent‐González, Alberto; Lumbreras, Ana; Molina, José Antonio

doi:10.1007/s10531-014-0709-3

Cited by 21 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This shortcoming is particularly evident for the nations in the Mediterranean basin and eastern Europe (Feola et al 2011). Moreover, recent studies have commented that several wetland plant communities, rare in the Mediterranean basin, are not included in the HD (Gigante et al 2013;Benavent-González et al 2014;Lastrucci et al 2014), or in other protection lists. This is probably because they tend to be dispersed within other biogeographical areas (mostly in central and northern Europe).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, some of these investigations, even though founded on relevant ecological theory, do not agree on the category to assess, nor do they take into consideration the results of plant community classification as operational units. Additional surveys based on these are scarce (Benavent-González et al 2014). The scientific community has not taken a great deal of interest in plant communities as a focus for conservation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some pioneer studies have recently been made in central Europe (Dengler et al 2005;Benson 2008;Berg et al 2014) for terrestrial communities. Very recently, research with conservation in mind, has focused on aquatic and/or hygrophilous plant communities in the Mediterranean areas (Benavent-González et al 2014;García-Madrid et al 2014;Izco 2015). These studies provide useful information on the ecological status of an area (Ferris & Humphrey 1999) and their Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 06:54 14 June 2016 2 C. Angiolini et al priority of natural and semi-natural habitats, with a special focus on those relating to wetlands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Habitat conservation prioritization: A floristic approach applied to a Mediterranean wetland network

Angiolini

Viciani

Bonari

et al. 2016

Plant Biosystems - An International Journal Dealing with all As

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The importance of plant communities for conservation purposes is recognized in their inclusion in the "Habitat Directive" (92/43 EEC), that relates habitat types to plant community syntaxonomic units. However, habitat definitions in the Habitat Directive lead to several inaccuracies in local habitat characterization. Several wetland plant communities (and their corresponding habitats), rare in the Mediterranean basin, are not included in the Habitat Directive. This study proposes criteria for assessing the conservation importance of habitats. It deals with plant community types at the alliance level, as promising units for setting conservation priorities. The principle criteria considered as drivers for setting alliance conservation values are the distribution and abundance of plant species of conservation interest and their fidelity to a plant community. Multivariate methods were used, and a quantitative floristic index of alliance conservation priority was created. This procedure was applied to an important wetland in central Italy. Results emphasize: (i) high conservation values of some alliances not listed in the Habitat Directive, confirming various gaps in the current conservation law affecting Mediterranean wetlands; (ii) that habitats widely distributed in other biogeographical areas, may greatly underestimate their conservation importance in Mediterranean region; (iii) need to consider regional peculiarities when setting conservation priorities.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Habitat conservation prioritization: A floristic approach applied to a Mediterranean wetland network

Angiolini

Viciani

Bonari

et al. 2016

Plant Biosystems - An International Journal Dealing with all As

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Other assessment criteria have been proposed: Naturalness (state of conservation of the plant community), Distance in the serial sequence to the potential natural vegetation (PNV), Cover rate (ratio of occupied area to a standard area), Endemicity (exclusivity of the plant community or its upper hierarchical ranks in the area under consideration), Fragility (ecological valence of the plant community), History (relict state of the plant community or of some of its prominent or characteristic species), and Vulnerability (tendency of a reduction in the area of occupancy) (Asensi et al 1991;Dengler et al 2005;Loidi et al 2007;Gauthier et al 2013;Benavent-González et al 2014;García-Madrid et al 2014;Berg et al 2014). Other parameters considered have been: the value of the plant communities in terms of their marginal chorological position (Richard et al 1988), the degree of fragmentationbased on the average distance between geographical occurrences (Seibert 1980;Loidi 1994)-, and the value of environmental services yielded: carbon retention, soil protection or protection of hydrological resources (Loidi 2008;Loidi et al 2007).…”

Section: J Izcomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Assessment based on the floristic composition of the community, estimated, for example, as a function of the richness, the importance of the flora involved or the presence of local endemic species (Theurillat et al 1988;Rossi et al 1999;Dengler et al 2005;Sudnik-Wójcikowska et al 2011;Benavent-González et al 2014;García-Madrid et al 2014) has also been tested. Other studies have opted for the assessment of landscapes (Couderc 1980), ecological diversity (Redžić 2007), environmental impact (Richard et al 1988;Ceschin et al 2010) or for the ranking of agroecosystems by diversity of vegetation (Taffetani & Rismondo 2009;Rismondo et al 2011;Galdenzi et al 2012).…”

Section: J Izcomentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk of extinction of plant communities: Risk and assessment categories

Izco

2015

Plant Biosystems - An International Journal Dealing with all As

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There are many proposals for the assessment of plant communities, based on different criteria, but very few proposals for categorization of the risk of extinction of plant communities (syntaxa). In this paper, concepts related to extent of occurence (EOO), area of occupancy (AOO), extinction and regeneration of plant communities are defined. Also, we propose and define several ranks of extinction risk based on quantitative criteria of the EOO, AOO and processes of decline. The proposals are global, for application to any type of cormophytic vegetation, without geographical restrictions. To check the adequacy of the proposed ranks and its thresholds, the method has been applied to the vegetation of the Iberian Peninsula based on the EOO (122 plant communities) and the AOO (2224 plant communities).

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Identifying areas of aquatic plant richness in a Mediterranean hotspot to improve the conservation of freshwater ecosystems

Rodríguez‐Merino

Fernández‐Zamudio

García‐Murillo

2019

Aquatic Conservation

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Identifying priority conservation areas is essential for minimizing the loss of biodiversity. Aquatic plants are of particular interest because their contribution to biodiversity is poorly understood and they play a central role in aquatic inland ecosystems. This study thus aimed to identify the areas on the Iberian Peninsula that contain the most aquatic plant species. It also explored the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network in conserving aquatic plants. To describe macroecological patterns of aquatic plant richness, species distribution models based on bioclimatic factors were generated using maximum entropy modelling. The results were used to identify high‐richness areas of potential conservation interest. Employing gap analysis, the overlap between these areas and the Natura 2000 network was examined to evaluate the effectiveness of the network. The species studied had been recorded in just 34.98% (2172/6209) of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid cells examined, meaning that 65.02% of the cells contained no species records. The gap analysis indicated that at least 2.27% of the cells represented areas of high conservation potential. This research underscores the limited effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network in protecting aquatic plants and shows that a high proportion of the aquatic ecosystems studied are subject to severe human pressures. The results of this work provide highly relevant and valuable information on the less‐studied regions of the Iberian Peninsula. Overall, the findings presented here should greatly inform the development of more objective strategies for conserving zones with a high diversity of aquatic plants. The information acquired should be used in future efforts to identify new priority conservation areas and assess those already in place.

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Plant communities as a tool for setting priorities in biodiversity conservation: a novel approach to Iberian aquatic vegetation

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

Habitat conservation prioritization: A floristic approach applied to a Mediterranean wetland network

Habitat conservation prioritization: A floristic approach applied to a Mediterranean wetland network

Risk of extinction of plant communities: Risk and assessment categories

Identifying areas of aquatic plant richness in a Mediterranean hotspot to improve the conservation of freshwater ecosystems

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