The use of plant community attributes to detect habitat quality in coastal environments.

ABSTRACT: The monitoring of biodiversity has mainly focused on the species level. However, researchers and land managers are making increasing use of complementary assessment tools that address higher levels of biological organization, i.e. communities, habitats and ecosystems. Recently, a variety of frameworks have been proposed for assessing the conservation status of communities or ecosystems. Among the various criteria proposed, all the protocols suggest considering (i) spatial aspects (range and area), and (ii) qualitative aspects of specific structures and functions. However, changes to ecological function are difficult to quantify and many protocols end up by using qualitative criteria. The aim of this work was to test the efficacy of some plant community attributes for the detection of veget

SUBMITTER: Del Vecchio S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4940507 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature