Botanical and ecological description of pasture types in an area of the Italian Alps

摘要

Alpine landscape is the outcome of the interactions between environment, vegetation and local human activities. Knowledge of the vegetation types present in mountain areas is an important tool for the proper management of these environments, which aredelicate and threatened by the socio-economic changes of recent decades. The aim of this study was to create a handbook for the description of the most important pastoral types present in the area. The study was carried out in Comelico (Italian Alps) ona pastoral surface area of > 2,000 ha. The research is based on about 350 botanical analyses, on the application of multivariate statistics, and on the Landolt ecological indexes for the discrimination of different identified types. The survey permittedthe identification of six main pasture types, and it allowed both ecological and botanical description of the different pasture communities in order to deepen the knowledge on the characteristics and on the dynamics of the Comelico pastures.