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This report summarizes the activities and achievements of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) from mid-2016 through to the end of 2017. During this period, the 13th Eurasian Grassland Conference took place in Sighişoara, Romania, and the 14th conference was held in Riga, Latvia. The 10th EDGG Field Workshop in Biodiversity patterns across a precipitation gradient in the Central Apennine mountains was conducted in the Central Apennines, Italy, this time in addition to multi-scale sampling of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens also including one animal group (leaf hoppers). Apart from the quarterly issues of its own electronic journal (Bulletin of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group), EDGG also finalised five grassland-related Special Features/Issues during the past 1.5 years in the following international journals: Applied Vegetation Science, Biodiversity and Conservation, Phytocoenologia, Tuexenia and Hacquetia. Beyond that, EDGG facilitated various national and supra-national vegetation-plot databases of grasslands and established its own specialised database for standardised multi-scale plot data of Palaearctic grasslands (GrassPlot).

This report summarises the activities and achievements of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) from January 2018 through July 2019. During the reported period, two Eurasian Grassland Conference (EGCs) took place: the 15th EGC in Sulmona, Italy, and the 16th EGC in Graz, Austria. The 11th and 12th EDGG Field Workshops studied vegetation diversity patterns in the inner alpine valleys of Austria and Switzerland, while the 13th Field Workshop was organised in Armenia. The formerly electronic newsletter of EDGG (Bulletin of the Eurasian Dry Grassland) was transformed into a peer-reviewed international journal, called Palaearctic Grasslands, which now is attracting both scientific and photographic contributions. Furthermore, the EDGG homepage was re-constructed with a new design and content management system. The EDGG has also finalised two grassland-related Special Features during the past 1.5 years in the international journals Tuexenia and Hacquetia, and contributed with eight chapters to the book Grasslands of the World: Diversity, Management and Conservation. The vegetation-plot database GrassPlot, containing standardised multi-scale data from Palaearctic grasslands and closely connected with EDGG, has developed well, as did some other regional and national grassland-focused databases.

The Mediterranean Region extends to the 1.6% of the world’s land surface and more than the half of the Mediterranean-type ecosystems of the world. The remarkable species richness in the Mediterranean Region mainly originates from an exceptional habitat diversity and the presence of several natural barriers facilitating the segregation and differentiation of local taxa and biocoenoses. In this article, we deal with the habitats characterized by grasslands and shrublands that clearly show the adaptations to what could be called “the Mediterranean syndrome”, i.e., the intrazonal Mediterranean grasslands and shrublands (MG&S). The main driving forces of the adaptive radiation and high biodiversity that characterize the MG&S are geographical segregation and appearance of new lands, climatic variability, substrate heterogeneity, species-specific plant- animal interactions and short generation times. MG&S are of paramount importance for delivering a wide array of ecosystem services. Apart from their importance for the maintenance of biodiversity, they play a major role in providing high quality forage for both livestock and wild animals; they support communities of insects with major roles in the ecosystem services of control and pollination; they sustain apiculture, and contribute to the prevention of erosion processes and maintenance of the water cycle; they buffer the negative impacts from fertilizers and pesticides and display highly significant aesthetic and recreational values. However, major threats to the provision of ecosystem services mostly originate from climate change, and recent land use changes (such as: “coastalization,” unbalanced grazing activities and abandonment of traditional practices). To mitigate the adverse effects of land use changes, the management of MG&S may be based on four principles; (a) ecosystem sustainability, (b) natural regeneration, (c) multifunctionality, and (d) protection.

Vegetation of the Thero-Brachypodietea Br.-Bl. 1947 class grows on poor, sceletal soils in the Eumediterranean vegetation zone. We have compiled a dataset of 169 new and already published vegetation plots originally classified into class Thero-Brachypodietea from whole of the Mediterranean area in Croatia. The species composition was classified by the cluster analysis and gradients explored using ordination methods. The Ecological interpretation of syntaxa was carried out using Pignatties ecological indicator values and the phytogeographic patterns were assessed by examining species distribution types. The results clarify positions of five local associations in broader syntaxonomic frame. New relevés show that succession occurs on a large area because of the absence of grazing. On these species rich grasslands different stages of forest vegetation is developing. Therefore, many of grassland species are highly threatened by extinction (eg. numerous endemic Ophrys species).