Idoia Biurrun

Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea | UPV/EHU · Vegetal Biology and Ecology

Aims: To produce a formalized classification of floodplain forests in the Iberian Peninsula and to assess their main bioclimatic gradients. Location: Iberian Peninsula. Methods: A data set with more than 3000 vegetation plots of floodplain forests was compiled from vegetation-plot databases, while climatic data were derived from a digital climatic...

This paper presents the details of the EDGG sampling methodology and its underlying rationales. The methodology has been applied during EDGG Research Expeditions and EDGG Field Workshops since 2009, and has been subsequently adopted by various other researchers. The core of the sampling are the EDGG Biodiversity Plots, which are 100‐m² squares comp...

Aims Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...

Questions: Which environmental factors influence fine-grain beta diversity of vegetation and do they vary among taxonomic groups? Location: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods: We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database, covering a wide range of di...

Questions. Phylogenetic analyses provide important insights in the study of biological invasions. Previous studies have shown contrasting effects of alien species on the phylogenetic structure of recipient communities. In this study we focus on two riparian plant communities with contrasting natural disturbance regimes: riparian forests and river b...

As a result of human activities, a considerable part of European vascular plants and their populations are non-native. Since the publication of previous studies summarizing the composition and structure of European alien flora, our knowledge has increased, and new alien plant inventories and updates to existing ones have been published. The aim of...

Aim: To provide the first syntaxonomic, plot-based classification of the dry grasslands and thorn-cushion communities in Armenia. Study area: Armenia. Methods: We sampled 111 vegetation plots (10 m²) and recorded environmental and structural parameters. We collected additional 487 relevés from surrounding countries for a broad-scale comparison. We...

Aims: We introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, includ...

Changing environment markedly shapes plant diversity and vegetation across all spatial scales. It leads to innumerable local, regional and sometimes global changes in plant communities. Here, we present eleven full-text research articles of the Special Issue “Plant communities in changing environment”, which focuses on the evaluation of plant diver...

The global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land-use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models primarily focus on quantifying impacts on species richness and abundance, often overlooking the ecological relevance of species traits and their contributions to ecos...

Terrestrial ecosystems affect climate by reflecting solar irradiation, evaporative cooling, and carbon sequestration. Yet very little is known about how plant traits affect climate regulation processes (CRPs) in different habitat types. Here, we used linear and random forest models to relate the community-weighted mean and variance values of 19 pla...

The first comprehensive phytosociological classification of all vegetation types in Europe (EuroVegChecklist; Applied Vegetation Science, 2016, 19, 3-264) contained brief descriptions of each type. However, these descriptions were not standardized and mentioned only the most distinct features of each vegetation type. The practical application of th...

On the occasion of the completion of the fourth volume of Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), we have analysed the performance of the journal since its inception. The number of papers and pages show a moderate increase over the years. VCS has been included in the Scopus database for more than a year and received its first CiteScore of 2.0 i...

Aims: The Raunkiaer's system classifies vascular plants into life forms based on the position of renewal buds during periods unfavourable for plant growth. Despite the importance of Raunkiaer's system for ecological research, a study exploring the diversity and distribution of life forms on a continental scale is missing. We aim to (i) map the dive...

Publication and citation numbers, citation rates and normalized citation rates 2020–2023 as well as some current citation metrics from Scopus and Web of Science for the 30 ecological journals compared in this study.

Balázs Deák 52 | Guillaume Decocq 53 | Iwona Dembicz 54 | Jürgen Dengler 55,56 | Valter Di Cecco 57 | Jan Dick 58 | Martin Diekmann 59 | Hartmut Dierschke 60, † | Thomas Dirnböck 61 | Inken Doerfler 62 | Jiří Doležal 63,64 | Ute Döring 65 | Tomasz Durak 66 | Ciara Dwyer 67 | Rasmus Ejrnaes 68 | Inna Ermakova 69 | Brigitta Erschbamer 70 | Giuliano F...

The relationship between phylogenetic diversity (PD) and functional diversity (FD) is important for understanding the mechanisms of community assembly. The traditional view assumes a coupled (positively correlated) relationship between these two diversity measures, suggesting that competitive exclusion and environmental filtering are important driv...

Dear members of the GrassPlot Consortium, With this second Newsletter of this year, we would like to update you on recent developments of our database. Not overly much has happened in the past half of a year, which was a busy field season for all of us like probably most of you. However, stay tuned for many upcoming exciting new paper projects, whi...

Aquatic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS), leading to multi-faceted ecological, economic and health impacts worldwide. The Iberian Peninsula comprises an exceptionally biodiverse Mediterranean region with a high number of threatened and endemic aquatic species, most of them strongly impacted...

The authors regret that the printed version of the above article contained an incomplete version of Table 1, in which only 20 invasive alien species were published out of the top-ranked 24 that should have been. The correct Table 1 is shown below. The authors apologise for any inconvenience caused.

As the number of introduced species keeps increasing unabatedly, identifying and prioritising current and potential Invasive Alien Species (IAS) has become essential to manage them. Horizon Scanning (HS), defined as an exploration of potential threats, is considered a fundamental component of IAS management. By combining scientific knowledge on tax...

Human-assisted introduction of alien plants is causing ecosystem transformations worldwide and is considered an important threat to biodiversity. We provide a European assessment of habitat levels of invasion in heathlands and scrub and identify successful alien plants and invasion trends across biogeographical regions. We analysed a geographically...

Ecological theory predicts close relationships between macroclimate and functional traits. Yet, global climatic gradients correlate only weakly with the trait composition of local plant communities, suggesting that important factors have been ignored. Here, we investigate the consistency of climate-trait relationships for plant communities in Europ...

Ecological theory predicts close relationships between macroclimate and functional traits. Yet, global climatic gradients correlate only weakly with the trait composition of local plant communities, suggesting that important factors have been ignored. Here, we investigate the consistency of climate-trait relationships for plant communities in Europ...

Aims Oak–hornbeam forests and related vegetation types (phytosociological order Carpinetalia betuli ) are widespread in temperate western Eurasia. However, their national classification systems are poorly compatible, and a broad‐scale classification based on numerical analyses is lacking. Therefore, we aimed to establish a unified formalized classi...

Dear Editors and Editorial Board members, Dear reviewers and authors, Dear colleagues, With this Newsletter relatively shortly after the last one, we do not only want to celebrate the successful completion of Volume 3, but we indeed have also a bunch of other exciting news.

We report on the completed third volume of Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS). VCS has been included in the Scopus bibliometric database and will receive its first CiteSore in mid-2023. We announce the 2022 Editors’ Award for a paper selected from the four papers nominated for Editors’ Choice during 2022. We selected Liu et al. (2022; Veget...

Aims Ellenberg-type indicator values are expert-based rankings of plant species according to their ecological optima on main environmental gradients. Here we extend the indicator-value system proposed by Heinz Ellenberg and co-authors for Central Europe by incorporating other systems of Ellenberg-type indicator values (i.e., those using scales comp...

Motivation: Indicator values are numerical values used to characterize the ecological niches of species and to estimate their occurrence along gradients. Indicator values on climatic and edaphic niches of plant species have received considerable attention in ecological research, whereas data on the optimal positioning of species along disturbance g...

Abstract Motivation: Indicator values are numerical values used to characterize the ecological niches of species and to estimate their occurrence along gradients. Indicator values on climatic and edaphic niches of plant species have received considerable attention in ecological research, whereas data on the optimal positioning of species along dist...

With this editorial, we introduce the Special Collection “Classification of grasslands and other open vegetation types in the Palaearctic”. In searching the Web of Science for classification papers on Palaearctic grasslands, we found 207 studies from 1972–2021, including 106 typical classification works. These studies originated mainly from Europe,...

Aim: Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances (i.e., β-diversity) is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional variation in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distance...

Species abundance distributions (SADs) link species richness with species abundances and are an important tool in the quantitative analysis of ecological communities. Niche‐based and sample‐based SAD models predict different spatial scaling properties of SAD parameters. However, empirical research on SAD scaling properties is largely missing. Here...

We present the first study of the forest vegetation dominated by Tilia platyphyllos growing on calcareous rock outcrops in the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. This vegetation is confined to steep rocky slopes of mainly northern aspect in limestone areas. Based on a dataset of 53 relevés recorded during the summer of 2019 and compared with s...

Aim The first comprehensive checklist of European phytosociological alliances, orders and classes (EuroVegChecklist) was published by Mucina et al. (2016, Applied Vegetation Science , 19 (Suppl. 1), 3–264). However, this checklist did not contain detailed information on the distribution of individual vegetation types. Here we provide the first maps...

Aims Classification of European bog vegetation ( Oxycocco‐Sphagnetea class); identification of diagnostic species for the class and vegetation subgroups (orders and alliances); development of an expert system for automatic classification of vegetation plots; and production of distribution maps of the Oxycocco‐Sphagnetea class and its alliances. Lo...

We report on the completed second volume of Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), whose content grew by 41% compared to the first volume. We were able to diversify article types, geographic coverage, authors and editorial team, the latter now consisting of 62 researchers from 29 countries with a female ratio of 31%. Three newly started Specia...

Aims : To quantify how fine-grain (within-plot) beta diversity differs among biomes and vegetation types. Study area : Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods : We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database spanning broad geographic and ecological gradients...

Aims : To quantify how fine-grain (within-plot) beta diversity differs among biomes and vegetation types. Study area : Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods : We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database spanning broad geographic and ecological gradients...

Aims : To clarify the syntaxonomic position of the grasslands in Navarre, with special focus on the dry grasslands, and to characterise the resulting syntaxonomic units in terms of diagnostic species and ecological conditions. Study area : Navarre (northern Spain). Methods : We sampled 119 plots of 10 m ² following the standardised EDGG methodology...

This paper comprises an overview of the riverine, swamp, floodplain forests and scrub throughout the continent. The team of researchers from various European countries has considered most of the forest habitats from the Canary Islands to European Russia. It was a difficult task to gather all the knowledge about this type of vegetation across the...

Aims : We studied the syntaxonomic position, biodiversity, ecological features, nature conservation value and current status of dry grasslands investigated by Josias Braun-Blanquet more than 60 years ago. Study area : Inner-alpine valleys of Austria. Methods : We sampled 67 plots of 10 m ² , following the standardized EDGG methodology. We subjected...

Aim: To analyse the biogeographic patterns of Temperate Deciduous Forests (TDFs) in Western Eurasia based on different life-forms and forests layers and explore their relationships with the current climate, Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) climate and topography. Location: Western Eurasia. Taxon: Vascular plants. Methods: We delimited nine regions encomp...