Factors affecting species composition, forage production and quality in the Mediterranean rangelands of Psilorites mountain in Crete
1998
Abid, M.
In the thirty study sites, measurement of plant cover, species composition and biomass were taken in each site at the end of the growing season in 1997. Classification of vegetation using simple average clustering with the Bray-Curtis distance technique resulted in 4 major groups. They were composed of 176 species belonging to 31 families. Multiple linear regressions were performed to elucidate the main environmental factors and management practices affecting forage production and quality. Three factors emerged as important to understand the high variability in production and quality: the first factor was protection from grazing combined with burning (age since the last burning ), the second factor was phosphorus, which was below the accepted limits favoring the phrygana dominance in the botanical composition, and the third factor was pH which controlled the availability of the nutrients in the soil.
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