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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Spatial Representation of Plant Diversity at Geographical Scale: The Italian Experience

subject

description

The first attempts to draw up plant biodiversity maps in Italy are identified, some of which represent re-workings of data collected for chorological atlases of geographic areas of different extents. These were based particularly on the UTM grid, introduced and codified in Italy by Pignatti [6]. The limited examples made in Italy concern regional, provincial or district areas, some also in protected natural areas. As examples considered original, the maps developed at the Phytotaxonomy and Phytogeography Laboratory of the University of Palermo are presented. These involve the province of Palermo, the Madonie Natural Park in Palermo province, and the eastern Sicani mountains. The map of this last differs from the first two only in the type of reticule adopted for the smaller extent of the base quadrant. The three maps presented constitute complements of more complex maps that focus on the plant landscape of the mapped areas. In these, plant diversity attributed to the individual quadrants of the grid is represented by quantitative data for the specific and infra-specific taxa surveyed, expressed in different color classes. The quantitative incidence of endemic taxa is shown on each map with different symbols (red circles of different diameters), also expressed here by diametric rather than color classes. For the Madonie Natural Park, plant diversity has been mapped with the same quantitative/color criteria, also showing the phytocoenotic richness of this important plant area.