Memorias de investigación
Artículos en revistas:
How does forest landscape structure explain tree species richness in a Mediterranean context?
Año:2008

Áreas de investigación
  • Agricultura

Datos
Descripción
Although the strong relationship between vegetation and climatic factors is widely accepted, other landscape composition and configuration characteristics could be significantly related with vegetation diversity patterns at different scales. Variation partitioning was conducted in order to analyse to what degree forest landscape structure, compared to other spatial and environmental factors, explained forest tree species richness in 278 UTM 10 9 10 km cells in the Mediterranean region of Catalonia (NE Spain). Tree species richness variation was decomposed through linear regression into three groups of explanatory variables: forest landscape (composition and configuration), environmental (topography and climate) and spatial variables. Additionally, the forest landscape characteristics which significantly contributed to explain richness variation were identified through a multiple regression model. About 60% of tree species richness variation was explained by the whole set of variables, while their joint effects explained nearly 28%. Forest landscape variables were those with a greater pure explanatory power for tree species richness (about 15% of total variation), much larger than the pure effect of environmental or spatial variables (about 2% each). Forest canopy cover, forest area and land cover diversity were the most significant composition variables in the regression model. Landscape configuration metrics had a minor effect on forest tree species richness, with the exception of some shape complexity indices, as indicators of land use intensity and edge effects. Our results highlight the importance of considering the forest landscape structure in order to understand the distribution of vegetation diversity in strongly human-modified regions like the Mediterranean
Internacional
Si
JCR del ISI
Si
Título de la revista
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION
ISSN
0960-3115
Factor de impacto JCR
1,421
Información de impacto
Volumen
17
DOI
Número de revista
0
Desde la página
1227
Hasta la página
1240
Mes
ENERO
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Participantes

Grupos de investigación, Departamentos, Centros e Institutos de I+D+i relacionados
  • Creador: Grupo de Investigación: Economía y Sostenibilidad del Medio Natural
  • Departamento: Economía y Gestión Forestal