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Ecologists interested in assessing landscapes and ecosystems must measure biomass, cover, and the density or frequency of various key species. Recently, sampling designs for measuring species richness and diversity, patterns of plant diversity, species-environment relationships, and species distributions have become fine-grained, as it has become increasingly important to accurately map and assess rare species for conservation. This book lays out the range of current methods for mapping and measuring species diversity, for field ecologists, resource managers, conservation biologist, and students, as a tool kit for future measurements of plant diversity.
India has a vast landmass of 328 million hectares, extending from the tropics to the alpine regions, rich wetlands to deserts, islands, long coastline to Western and Eastern Ghats and the high Himalayas. It has equally rich and diverse plant diversity, with over 47,000 species that are already documented. Because of the large population dependence on these plants, expansion of agriculture, urbanization and development efforts, many species are threatened too. Some of the issues concerning plant diversity in India are unique to the country. Taxonomic and floristic studies on all major groups have been carried out but the information is scattered in research papers and regional/local floras, m...
Conservation in protected areas has focused on preserving biodiversity of ecosystems and species, whereas conserving the genetic diversity contained within species has historically often been ignored. However, maintaining genetic diversity is fundamental to food security and the provision of raw materials and it is best preserved within plants' natural habitats. This is particularly true for wild plants that are directly related to crop species and can play a key role in providing beneficial traits, such as pest or disease resistance and yield improvement. These wild relatives are presently threatened due to processes of habitat destruction and change and methodologies have been adapted to provide in-situ conservation through the establishment of genetic reserves within the existing network of protected areas.Providing a long-awaited synthesis of these new methodologies, this book presents a practical set of management guidelines that can be used for the conservation of plant genetic diversity of crop wild relatives in protected areas.
Jonathan Silvertown here explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary n...
This book presents the first assessment of the high-elevation flora of the Central Caucasus with a community ecology emphasis. Following a geostatistical-climatological description of the region (in comparison to the European Alps), it describes the montane, alpine and nival plant assemblages on the basis of an ecological approach that combines moisture, soils and local habitat peculiarities. Highlights include the famous giant herb communities in treeless parts of the upper montane belt, the various facets of alpine turf, and the unique assemblages and settings in the nival region. Further chapters address potential niche conservation between the Caucasus and the Alps, as well as a compilation of plant species habitat preferences (indicator values) that applies to a concept developed for the Alps. Richly illustrated and featuring extensive quantitative data on species abundance, the book offers a unique guide to the plant species diversity of this prominent mountain range, and a valuable resource for comparative ecology and biodiversity assessments of warm temperate mountain systems.
Diversity and Evolution of Land Plants provides a fresh and long overdue treatment of plant anatomy and morphology for the biology undergraduate of today. Setting aside the traditional plod through the plant taxa, the author adopts a problem-based functional approach, exploring plant diversity as a series of different solutions to the design problems facing plant life on land.
Biodiversity can provide a series of important ecosystem functions and ecosystem services, which meet the needs of human beings. Plants are the biological group with the highest carbon content on earth, their diversity has attracted increased attention. The interpretation of plant diversity patterns and drivers is crucial for the conservation and utilization of plant resources and is also one of the hot topics in plant science and ecology. There are already many studies on the patterns and drivers of plant diversity, including different diversity dimensions (e.g., taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity) and spatial scales (different plots/sites, watershed, country, continent, and ...