Biodiversity plays a crucial role in stability and productivity of natural ecosystem. The main goal of this research was to classify ecological groups in steppe rangeland and investigate their relationships with plant diversity indices. Therefore, fifty different Land Unit Tracts (LUT) were identified in Khod-Neuk basin, Yazd province, Iran, in 2010. Vegetation and soil samples were taken in th...

Abstract. Rangeland vegetation dynamics encompass all processes of changes in vegetation composition and structure over time. Investigating the rangeland ecosystem dynamics makes it possible to determine the effects of climatic and management conditions on qualitative and quantitative changes of the vegetation in a specific period of time. Accordingly, data collection and measurements for evalu...

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of topographical factors on the classification of grassland plant communities in the rangelands of Ghorkhud, Northern Khorasan Province, Iran. For sampling, land units were specified. A floristic list was prepared using minimal area method based on the nested plot (Braun-Blanquet method). 116 10m2 furrows were selected. Within e...

Zagros forests are one of the important natural ecosystems in Iran with high plant diversity and variety of plant communities. In recent decades, fire events have frequently occurred in some of these ecosystems. The purpose of this research is to investigate the composition and diversity of herbaceous species after nine years of fire occurrence in the forests of Zagros in western Iran. For this...

Coastal sandy ecosystems are increasingly being threatened by human pressure, causing loss of biodiversity, habitat degradation and landscape modifications. However, there are still very few detailed studies focussing on compositional changes in coastal dune plant communities over time. In this work, we investigated how coastal dune European Union (EU) habitats (from pioneer annual beach commun...

The construction of linear transport infrastructure has severe effects on ecosystem functions and properties, and the restoration of the associated roadslopes contributes to reduce its impact. This restoration is usually approached from the perspective of plant cover regeneration, ignoring plant-soil interactions and the consequences for plant growth. The addition of a 30 cm layer of topsoil is...

As environmental stress increases positive (facilitative) plant interactions often predominate. Plant-plant associations (or lack thereof) can indicate whether certain plant species favor particular types of microsites (e.g., shrub canopies or plant-free interspaces) and can provide valuable insights into whether "nurse plants" will contribute to seeding or planting success during ecological re...

Drought is a normal, recurring feature of climate phenomena; it may occur virtually in all climatic regions. The effects of drought accumulate slowly and its impacts are spread over a larger geographical area than other natural hazards. Drought is a natural hazard originating from a deficiency of precipitation that result in a water shortage for some activities or some groups and is often assoc...