Abstracts

Diversity of the Vegetation

Several steps in the scientific development of vegetation research can be distinguish-ed. For a long time, most work emphasized inventory and description, at first merely using qualitative approaches, but later based becoming increasingly quantitative. As time progressed, a better understanding of the ecology and functioning of plant commu-nities became a major topic, reflected in the development of research branches likes ecohydrology, landscape ecology and experimental ecology. More recently, increasing effort has focussed on the integration of knowledge from different disciplines. This is a demanding and difficult task, for which computer models and so-called expert systems prove to be helpful tools. The recently-developed Dutch expert system SYNBIOSYS (Syntaxonomical Biological System) is an exemple of such a development. The system is operational on both the community and the landscape level. It is based on the National Vegetation Classifi-cation of the Netherlands, for which the fifth and final volume was published only two years ago. This new classification relies on more than 350,000 releves, collected between 1929 and the present. The software package TURBOVEG, a comprehensive database management system, was designed for input, processing and presentation of these phytosociolo-gical data. Currently, TURBOVEG has been installed in more than 25 countries throughout Europe and abroad, resulting in a series of national databases. These national databases – in combination with the syntaxonomic overviews on alliances and classes by the European Vegetation Survey, and the recently-published European map of potential vegetation – will enable the compilation of a European expert system, modelled after the Dutch expert system SYNBIOSYS.

Note. Abstracts are published in author's edition

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