Relationship between shrub cover and available forage in Mediterranean shrublands

摘要

Shrublands with kermes oak (Quercus coccifera L.) as a dominant species play an important role in the nutrition of grazing animals in the Mediterranean region during all seasons of the year. Their proper management, however, is inhibited by the lack of easy and inexpensive methods for measuring available forage. In this paper, the spatial distribution of available forage as well as its relationship with shrub cover measured on the ground and in aerial photographs were investigated. The research was conducted in kermes oak shrublands of central Macedonia, Greece. Two-phase sampling was applied by using 1:15,000 aerial photographs to select 47 plots, 0.1 ha each, on an area of 545 ha where shrub cover and available forage (herbage, current year's and total browse) were measured. These measurements were carried out on four shrub cover classes: open (0 to 15%), moderate (16 to 40%), dense (41 to 70%) and very dense (71 to 100%); and three height classes: low (0 to 0.5 m), middle (0.6 to 1.0 m) and tall (1.1 to 1.5 m). High resolution aerial photographs (1:6,000) taken during the year of ground sampling were used to estimate shrub cover and correlate to ground measurement. Estimated cover had a high correlation (r≥ 0.96) with ground measurements in open, moderate and dense shrub stands. The open to dense cover classes had significantly more available forage than the very dense cover class; and the low height class significantly higher than the other two classes. The regression of available forage with shrub cover measured on the ground and on aerial photographs produced non-linear equations with high coefficients of determination (R2 > 0.70) only when shrub height up to 0.5 m irrespective of the cover class was considered. It is concluded that shrub cover measured on aerial photographs can be used to predict shrub cover on the ground as well as available forage in kermes oak shrublands provided that the shrubs are not too tall (up to 0.50 m).