Master Thesis

Quantifying beta diversity patte rns in alpine grassland in Gran Paradiso National Park

Jonas Benner (07/2016-01/2017)

Support: Carl Beierkuhnlein, Andreas Schweiger

Rapid declining of biodiversity makes an observation of the biodiversity compellingly necessary. The problem with only collecting in-situ data is that it not possible to grant a satisfactory observation. A large scale and long-term observation method should be implemented. ECOPOTENTIAL tries to combine remote sensing and in-situ data to find a successful method for observation. In the Gran Paradiso National Park, in-situ data was collected and used to study three methodological questions for quantifying β-diversity patterns. The focus was on the calculation of β-diversity patterns based on three different amounts of neighbours. The β-diversity patterns were calculated based on two, four and eight neighbours. For the β-diversity calculation with two neighbours, significant differences in heterogeneity were found between the analysed vegetation types. There were, also significant differences between the β-diversity patterns, when using two, four or eight neighbours for calculating the β-diversity. Summarising, when analysing β-diversity patterns, the amount of neighbours should be adapted to the vegetation type and to the homogeneity of a landscape. Further, calculating with β-diversity the heterogeneity of a landscape could be developed to a useful tool, for long-term observation of changing landscape.