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The vegetation database CACTUS (registered in GIVD under SA-00-004) aims to bring together all plot-based relevés from the Dutch Caribbean Islands that are available from literature, unpublished resources, and recent field surveys. The database currently contains 2,701 vegetation descriptions. The database is used for vegetation classification, to investigate vegetation change over time, to assist in the planning of vegetation surveys, as a source for plant species distribution maps, and to inform nature conservation and policy. Taxonomic references: Van Proosdij (2012) for the Leeward Islands, Axelrod (2017, 2021) for the Windward Islands, except for St. Martin (Howard 1974-1989).

Aim: Assessing the performances of different sampling approaches for documenting community diversity may help to identify optimal sampling efforts and strategies, and to enhance conservation and monitoring planning. Here, we used two data sets based on probabilistic and preferential sampling schemes of Italian forest vegetation to analyze the multifaceted performances of the two approaches across three major forest types at a large scale. Location: Italy. Methods: We pooled 804 probabilistic and 16,259 preferential forest plotsassamplesofvascularplantdiversity across the country. We balanced the two data sets in terms of sizes, plot size, geographical position, and vegetation types. For each of the two data sets, 1000 subsets of 201 random plots were compared by calculating the shared and exclusive indicator species, their overlap in the multivariate space, and the areas encompassed by spatially-constrained rarefaction curves. We then calculated an index of performance using the ratio between the additional and total information collected by each sampling approach. The performances were tested and evaluated across the three major forest types. Results: The probabilistic approach performed better in estimating species richness and diversity of species assemblages, but did not detect other components of the regional diversity, such as azonal forests. The preferential approach outperformed the probabilistic approach in detecting forest-specialist species and plant diversity hotspots. Conclusions: Using a novel workflow based on vegetation-plot exclusivities and commonalities, our study suggests probabilistic and preferential sampling approaches are to be used in combination for better conservation and monitor planning purposes to detect multiple aspects of plant community diversity. Our findings can assist the implementation of national conservation planning and large-scale monitoring of biodiversity.

The SIMETHIS-Flore-CBNMed database (GIVD EU-FR-006) is a regional database managed by the Conservatoire Botanique National Méditerranéen dealing with occurrence data of the vascular flora of Southeastern France. It covers the following departments: Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Hérault, Gard, Lozère, Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Alpes-Maritimes. It includes around 19,300 phytosociological relevés of various vegetation types from the mediterranean coastal area to the alpine vegetation belt. Vegetation plots are unpublished relevés as well as digitized data from bibliographic sources (around 310 references). Almost all relevés are geolocalized. The oldest ones date from 1915 and the most recent from 2021 and the integration of new data is done continuously. The taxonomical scheme follows the French national taxonomic repository TAXREF (currently v.15). The database is part of the European Vegetation Archive under semi-restricted regime and will be updated every year. Some of the bibliographic data featured in SIMETHIS-Flore-CBNMed may also be present in SOPHY database (EU-FR-003). All the bibliographic data of SIMETHIS-Flore-CBNMed undergo a curation process regarding georeferencing, taxonomic nomenclature updates and syntaxonomic interpretation. Abbreviations: CBNMed: Conservatoire Botanique National Méditerranéen.

Multi-year temporal studies are invaluable tools for monitoring changes in biodiversity through time. However, their applications in coastal ecosystems are still scarce. We investigated temporal trends in coastal dunes analyzing a set of 858 randomly-sampled georeferenced relevés performed between 2002 and 2015 along Central Italy’s sandy coastlines. Specifically, we explored changes in species richness and cover of targeted sandy habitats, we investigated trends in the cover of selected psammophilous native species and we assessed patterns of invasion by means of regression techniques. We observed a significant decrease in species richness and cover of the dune grasslands habitat. The species-level analysis confirmed a negative trend for two characteristic species of dune grasslands, Cutandia maritima and Medicago littoralis, while revealing a similar decline for Crucianella maritima and for Ammophila arenaria subsp. australis, key species of mobile dunes. The most striking trends emerged analyzing patterns in the cover of an invasive alien species, Carpobrotus sp., which showed a concerning increase in shifting dunes. In conclusion, our analyses reveal concerning changes involving dune grasslands, and at the same time hint at “early warnings” of degradation processes traceable in shifting dunes.

Rendiconti Lincei has dedicated a Special Issue to present a number of case studies highlighting the role played by the European Vegetation Survey Working Group established by Sandro Pignatti and his colleagues in support to the implementation of the Habitats Directive. Studies include theoretical analyses as well as researches conducted at different spatial and temporal scales focused on the assessment and monitoring of the conservation status of habitats and target plant species, identification of new habitats and subtypes, and their diagnostic species.

A survey and a formalized phytosociological classification of the marsh vegetation of the class Phragmito-Magno-Caricetea in central Italy is presented. Formal definitions of the majority of wetland associations recorded from the Italian territory were defined using the Cocktail method and applied to a large data set of vegetation plots extracted from the database VegItaly (hosted by the web database system "anArchive"). A total of 43 associations belonging to seven alliances and four orders were recognized. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), species indicator values and altitude were used to visualize ecological differences between the associations. Altitude, nutrient status and soil reaction were identified as the main environmental gradients responsible for diversification and distribution of the Phragmito-Magno-Caricetea communities in central Italy.

Biurrun, Idoia/0000-0002-1454-0433; Rojo, Maria Pilar Rodriguez/0000-0001-5449-9386; Ermakov, Nikolai/0000-0001-7550-990X; De Sanctis, Michele/0000-0002-7280-6199; Svenning, Jens-Christian/0000-0002-3415-0862; Virtanen, Risto/0000-0002-8295-8217; Agrillo, Emiliano/0000-0003-2346-8346; Onyshchenko, Viktor/0000-0001-9079-7241; Marceno, Corrado/0000-0003-4361-5200; Willner, Wolfgang/0000-0003-1591-8386; Fernandez-Gonzalez, Federico/0000-0003-1234-4065; Jansen, Florian/0000-0002-0331-5185; Swacha, Grzegorz/0000-0002-6380-2954; Dengler, Jurgen/0000-0003-3221-660X; Guarino, Riccardo/0000-0003-0106-9416; Sopotlieva, Desislava/0000-0002-9281-7039; Venanzoni, Roberto/0000-0002-7768-0468; Chytry, Milan/0000-0002-8122-3075; Kuzemko, Anna/0000-0002-9425-2756; Danihelka, Jiri/0000-0002-2640-7867; Kuzemko, Anna/0000-0002-9425-2756; Venanzoni, Roberto/0000-0002-7768-0468; Gavilan, Rosario G./0000-0002-1022-445X; Jansen, Florian/0000-0002-0331-5185; Wohlgemuth, Thomas/0000-0002-4623-0894; Svenning, Jens-Christian/0000-0002-3415-0862; Sibik, Jozef/0000-0002-5949-862X; Casella, Laura/0000-0003-2550-3010; Lenoir, Jonathan/0000-0003-0638-9582; Attorre, Fabio/0000-0002-7744-2195; Kacki, Zygmunt/0000-0002-2241-1631; Jandt, Ute/0000-0002-3177-3669; Carni, Andraz/0000-0002-8909-4298; Jirousek, Martin/0000-0002-4293-478X; GARCIA-MIJANGOS, ITZIAR/0000-0002-6642-7782; Campos, Juan Antonio/0000-0001-5992-2753; Fanelli, Giuliano/0000-0002-3143-1212; Haveman, Rense/0000-0001-9127-4549; Acic, Svetlana/0000-0001-6553-3797; De Bie, Els/0000-0001-7679-743X; Font, Xavier/0000-0002-7253-8905; Moeslund, Jesper Erenskjold/0000-0001-8591-7149; Martynenko, Vasiliy/0000-0002-9071-3789; Jimenez-Alfaro, Borja/0000-0001-6601-9597; Ejrnaes, Rasmus/0000-0003-2538-8606; Carlon Ruiz, Luis/0000-0003-3442-8710; Angelini, Pierangela/0000-0002-5321-9757; Silc, Urban/0000-0002-3052-699X; Landucci, Flavia/0000-0002-6848-0384; Ewald, Jorg/0000-0002-2758-9324; Dziuba, Tetiana/0000-0001-8621-0890 WOS: 000368074600018 The European Vegetation Archive (EVA) is a centralized database of European vegetation plots developed by the IAVS Working Group European Vegetation Survey. It has been in development since 2012 and first made available for use in research projects in 2014. It stores copies of national and regional vegetation-plot databases on a single software platform. Data storage in EVA does not affect on-going independent development of the contributing databases, which remain the property of the data contributors. EVA uses a prototype of the database management software TURBOVEG 3 developed for joint management of multiple databases that use different species lists. This is facilitated by the SynBioSys Taxon Database, a system of taxon names and concepts used in the individual European databases and their corresponding names on a unified list of European flora. TURBOVEG 3 also includes procedures for handling data requests, selections and provisions according to the approved EVA Data Property and Governance Rules. By 30 June 2015, 61 databases from all European regions have joined EVA, contributing in total 1 027 376 vegetation plots, 82% of them with geographic coordinates, from 57 countries. EVA provides a unique data source for large-scale analyses of European vegetation diversity both for fundamental research and nature conservation applications. Updated information on EVA is available online at http://euroveg.org/eva-database. Czech Science Foundation (Centre of Excellence PLADIAS) [14-36079G] Our major thanks go to thousands of European vegetation scientists of several generations who collected the original vegetation-plot data in the field, published them or made their unpublished data available to others, and to those who spent myriad hours digitizing data and managing the contributing databases. EVA data management has been partly funded by the Czech Science Foundation (Centre of Excellence PLADIAS, 14-36079G).

We introduce RanVegDunes (GIVD ID EU-IT-020), the first Italian database gathering standardized, randomly- sampled vegetation data in coastal dune environments. RanVegDunes currently consists of 979 original georeferenced relevés randomly collected over about 160 km of Holocenic dune systems of central Italy between 2002 and 2015. Plots were located in five Italian administrative regions (Lazio, Campania, Abruzzo, Molise and Puglia), where sandy vegetation was randomly recorded in standardized 4-m2plots across the whole coastal zonation, thus including upper beach, embryo dunes, shifting dunes, dune grasslands, wooded dunes and Mediterranean forests. Each plot was georeferenced with a high level of accuracy using a GPS unit. For each plot, a list of vascular plant species based on updated nomenclature was compiled, and an estimate of abundance was calculated for each species using a percentage cover scale ranging from 1 to 10 (1 = 1-10%; 2 = 10-20%; ...; 10 = 90-100%). Two habitat classification systems were used for the description of collected plots: specifically, each vegetation plot was classified according to the Interpretation Manual of the 92/43/EEC Habitats Directive and also to the hierarchical structure of the EUNIS habitat classification. Currently, RanVegDunes includes vegetation plots belonging to nine EU Habitats (1210, 2110, 2120, 2210, 2230, 2250, 2260, 2270, 9340), which in turn correspond to five EUNIS Habitats (B1.1, B1.3, B1.4, B1.6, B1.7). RanVegDunes is a powerful tool for a variety of studies addressing topics such as temporal trends in coastal vegetation, ecological modeling, re-visitation studies, spatio-temporal patterns of invasion and will therefore greatly benefit from further collection of data.

Within the framework of the project 'Plant communities of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and their vulnerability' a team of 22 vegetation scientists, including the authors of the present paper, developed a current synopsis of all syntaxa known from this federal state in NE Germany. This synopsis is based on the classification of more than 50,000 relevés stored in a TURBOVEG database. It was recently published in a two-volume monograph. In the present paper, we present major aspects of the approaches used in the monograph and discuss the experiences gained with them. We also provide an overview of the 12 axiomatic rules that form the classification approach in the monograph; review the application of the central syntaxon concept and its advantages and drawbacks; and examine the importance of nomenclaturally reviewing all syntaxon names, including older synonyms. We furthermore provide an overview of our transparent methodology for assessing plant communities according to their vulnerability and conservation value. Finally, we take stock of what was learned from the project and provide an overview of future tasks.