Vegetation data processing and analysis in the light of the European Vegetation Survey

Abstract

The processing and analysis of collected field data is one of the key activities in vegetation research and as such a key topic of the European Vegetation Survey (EVS). The handling of vegetation data plays a vital role in achieving the goals that were set in the early years of the newborn organization, including the development of compa­tible software and the encouragement of national programs with the compilation of an overview of European plant communities (Rodwell et al. 1995). The national programs should result in national vegetation databases, that ultimately could be brought together in one central European vegetation database. How the major goals of the European Vegetation Survey were dealt with during the last forty years of vegetation research, is the topic of this article. The overview will be completed with some examples of how the results are applied in European nature policy and preceded by some historic and general concepts. The handling of vegetation data can be divided into an analytic and a synthetic phase, the first one dealing with the collection of data in the field, the second one with the processing of collected data behind the desk. The plot observation (vegetation relevé) can be seen as the basic document in the entire operation, whereas ordination and classification are principal techniques to reveal the interplay of plant species in nature, based on differences in how vegetation can be looked at, differences that strongly influenced the development of vegetation research in diverse parts of the world.