| Popis: |
There seems to be a consensus that forest meadows exhibit an unusually high species richness and diversity, but there exists little scientific literature to back this up. Present study has analysed the flora-and vegetation composition of four Danish forest meadows in Bidstrup forest with the aim of identifying factor on which have an increasing influence on the species richness and diversity of vascular plants on forest meadows. The flora has been analysed in a series of circular plots on each of the chosen forest meadows by use of Raunkiærs frequency analysis (Raunkiær, 1909-1910). Ad-ditionally, the environmental parameters soil pH, canopy cover, soil carbon and soil nitrogen have been measured within each of these plots. The gathered data has been statistically analysed. As part of the statistical analysis, registered species have been assigned lifeforms (Raunkiær 1907), and to ecology based functional groups, meadow-specialists, shadow-intolerant, and forest-specialists. Both Shannon’s and Simpson’s diversity indices have ben calculated (Hammer, 1999-2022). Correlation tests and two sample tests (Hammer, 1999-2022) have been performed to inves-tigate how the environmental parameters and the forest-edge directly adjoining the forest mead-ows affect the flora- and vegetation- compositions. Specifically, if any of the above mentioned fac-tors either has an increasing effect on the species richness and diversity of forest meadows, or they affect the forest meadow in such a fashion that, even if the forest meadow itself doesn’t have a high species richness and diversity, it exhibits an important contribution to the overall Dannish species richness and diversity. |
