Sufficient knowledge about the abiotic ranges of species, communities and nature target types (NTTs) are the basis for the development of measures for policy and management including granting permits. Within this framework this project is fulfilling two bare essentials.
Reliable information on the ecological ranges per species and per community, especially on plant species, is needed to improve the reliability of model output, e.g. for computing critical loads.
Information is also needed for the calculations of environmental deficiencies in EU protected Natura2000 areas, and also for the estimation of how effective restoration measurements will turn out.
Research objectives:
Construction of a database of measured abiotic conditions per species and per vegetation type; translation of quantitative abiotic ranges into rules-of-thumb with respect to directive factors and development series; making available quantitative data for policy, management and research; guarantee of knowledge dissemination and utilisation through fact sheets and publications in professional journals.
Problem description:
Sufficient knowledge about the abiotic ranges of species, communities and nature target types (NTTs) are the basis for the development of measures for policy and management including granting permits. Within this framework this project is fulfilling two bare essentials. Reliable information on the ecological ranges per species and per community, especially on plant species, is needed to improve the reliability of model output, e.g. for computing critical loads.
Information is also needed for the calculations of environmental deficiencies in EU protected Natura2000 areas, and also for the estimation of how effective restoration measurements will turn out.
Materials and methods:
Building and maintenance database, input of relevant data in database; analysing with multiple regressions response curves of (plant) species and (vegetation) types s.s. and s.l. with the help of splines; data collection from published and unpublished research results; taking soil samples and analysing them, originating from locations with well known vegetation relevés from permanent national grid (LMF).
Results and products:
1. Database of responses to abiotic conditions; replacement of Ellenberg numbers for humidity and nutrients by measurement-based values;
2. Background report, with emphasis on interaction effects;
3. Overview of development series and rules-of-thumb with respect to vegetation in response to changing abiotic conditions;
4. Making available the data for use in models e.g. connected of critical load estimation;
5. Incorporation of results in knowledge systems such as SynBioSys, SBB reference tables, www.abiotic.wur.nl, etc. |
