Plant Communities in Changing Environment

Abstract

These changes pose significant challenges to the survival and functioning of plant communities, which are the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems. Human activities have mainly caused rapid and large-scale environmental changes in recent years (Speißer et al. 2022;Zhang et al. 2023). In fact, plant communities are not immune to ecological shifts and global change factors, e.g. abandonment of traditional management, eutrophication, warming, nitrification, pollution, etc. (Halada et al. 2009;Polst et al. 2022). One of the results of environmental changes is the loss of biodiversity, which is very important for maintaining the structure and function of ecosystems (Zhang et al. 2023). Consequently, plant diversity remains one of the central topics in many studies (Bobbink et al. 1998; Biurrun et al. 2021; Hrivnák et al. 2022; Speißer et al. 2022). Also, the diversity and distribution of plant functional traits (Díaz et al. 2009; Bruelheide et al. 2018) and life forms (Midolo et al. 2024) has a broad appeal in the research of plant communities. Climatic factors (including extreme events and seasonality), disturbance frequency and intensity, and disturbance history are suggested as key factors to be considered in global comparisons of vegetation responses to land use and in predictive models of ecosystem dynamics. Rural landscapes, especially in Central Europe, have undergone significant land-use changes since the 1950′s, including a prolonged period of abandonment (Hegedüšová and Senko 2011; Harásek et al. 2023; Janišová et al. 2023) and the Katarína Hegedüšová Vantarová