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Phytosociological database of grassland, marshland and halophilous vegetation of Croatia

Phytosociological research of various types of vegetation has been carried out in Croatia for about 80 years. The foundations of vegetation science were established by Horvatić (1927, 1930) and Horvat (1930, 1931), whose path has been followed by numerous botanists, resulting in a great many phytosociological papers. All investigations have been carried out in accordance with the Braun-Blanquet methodology. On the basis of the literature, and data derived from the author’ s own field research, during the past several years a phytosociological database of the grassland, marshland and halophilous vegetation of Croatia has been prepared. The programme TURBOVEG was used to input and save data. So far, 4620 relevés have been stored in the database, and most of them have been geocoded as well. A number of attributes are associated with each relevé, some of the most basic being: literature source of the data, date, locality, coordinates, plot area, exposition, inclination, vegetation cover, name of the community and so on. The grassland vegetation of Croatia shows great biological diversity. About 110 associations of grassland vegetation are known. To date, a total of 3350 relevés have been entered into the database, and there are more than 110, 000 records of plant taxa-localities. The best-represented associations are: Arrhenatheretum elatioris, Bromo-Cynosuretum cristati, and Stipo-Salvietum officinalis. The most frequent grassland species are: Plantago lanceolata, Trifolium pratense, Ranunculus acris, Holcus lanatus and Lotus corniculatus. Marshland vegetation of the class Phragmito-Magnocaricetea accounts, so far, for 40 communities in Croatia. There are 760 relevés stored in the database. The most frequent marshland association is Phragmitetum australis, and the most common marshland plant species are: Lythrum salicaria, Mentha aquatica, Phragmites australis and Iris pseudacorus. The database of the halophilous coastal vegetation of Croatia embraces 16 associations and 510 relevés. The most widespread is the vegetation of maritime rocks that belongs to the association Plantagini-Limonietum cancellati. The most frequent coastal plant taxa are: Elymus pycnanthus, Crithmum maritimum, Inula crithmoides, Limonium serotinum, Arthrocnemum fruticosum, Limonium cancellatum, etc. There are numerous advantages to a phytosociological database. Data collected and processed in a single place constitute the basis for future scientific research, enable persuasive grounds to be provided for the protection of rare and threatened plant species and habitats, and serve for an estimation of the economic value of specific types of vegetation.

Phytosociological database

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