Grazing effects on woody and herbaceous plant biodiversity on a limestone mountain in northern Tunisia.

ABSTRACT: Mediterranean maquis vegetation is highly biodiverse, but widespread grazing poses a challenge for management and conservation. We sampled woody and herbaceous plants separately on a limestone mountain with strong mesic-xeric gradients in Tunisia's Parc National de L'Ichkeul, assessed grazing pressure (on a scale of 1-3), and asked whether grazing had a significant effect on plant compositional abundance before and after controlling for environmental covariates. Sites on the more mesic lakeside face of the mountain were most compositionally unique, and forbs contributed most to the herbaceous beta-diversity on the mountain. We used variance partitioning to separate the collective and individual effects of the abiotic environment, grazing, human activity, and space on herbaceous and woody b

SUBMITTER: Kirk DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6698127 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature