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Mediterranean Coastal Sand Dune Vegetation: Influence of Natural and Anthropogenic Factors

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Abstract

The aim of the present work was to assess the conservation status of coastal dune systems in Tuscany (Italy). Emphasis was given to the presence and abundance of plant communities identified as habitat in accordance with the Directive 92/43/EEC. Twenty transects perpendicular to the shoreline were randomly positioned on the whole coastal area (30 km in length) in order to sample the full spectrum of plant communities. Vegetation zonation and relationships with the most frequent disturbance factors in the study area—beach cleaning, coastline erosion, presence of paths and roads, bathing settlements and trampling—were investigated through principal coordinate analysis and canonical correspondence analysis. Natural factors, such as distance from the sea and total length, were also considered. Differences in the conservation status of the sites were found, ranging from the total disappearance of the foredune habitats to the presence of the complete psammophilous (sand-loving) plant communities. Erosion, trampling, and paths were found to be closely correlated with degradation and habitat loss. Furthermore, the overall plant species diversity of dunes was measured with NHDune, a modified version of the Shannon index; while the incidence of invasive taxa was calculated using N, a naturalness index. However, these diversity indices proved to be a weaker bioindicator of ecosystem integrity than habitat composition along transects. A possible strategy for the conservation and management of these coastal areas could be to protect the foredunes from erosion and limit trampling through the installation of footbridges or the use of appropriate fences.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Migliarino-San Rossore-Massaciuccoli Regional Park and the Maremma Regional Park for permission to conduct this research, and the Italian Ministry of University and Research for providing financial support. Thank are also due to Francesca Marcacci and Paolo Montagnini for help during field sampling. Lastly, the author thanks the Editor-in-Chief and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that improved the previous versions of the paper.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Via L. Ghini 13, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Daniela Ciccarelli

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  1. Daniela Ciccarelli
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Correspondence to Daniela Ciccarelli.

Electronic supplementary material

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267_2014_290_MOESM1_ESM.doc

Localization, coordinates, distance from the sea and total length of each transect. MSRM = Migliarino – San Rossore – Massaciuccoli Regional Park, MAR = Maremma Regional Park. Supplementary material 1 (DOC 39 kb)

267_2014_290_MOESM2_ESM.doc

Floristic composition of the vegetation types analyzed, including diagnostic (*), frequent and abundant taxa recorded in the plots. Frequency indicates the percent of plots in which species occurred within the habitat. Mean abundance indicates the percent cover of the species in the habitat, averaged across plots where it occurred. Supplementary material 2 (DOC 48 kb)

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Ciccarelli, D. Mediterranean Coastal Sand Dune Vegetation: Influence of Natural and Anthropogenic Factors. Environmental Management 54, 194–204 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-014-0290-2

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