Publication details

The Romanian Grassland Database (RGD): historical background, current status and future perspectives

Authors	VASSILEV Kiril RUPRECHT Eszter ALEXIU Valeriu BECKER Thomas BELDEAN Monica BITA-NICOLAE Claudia CSERGO Anna Maria DZHOVANOVA Iliana FILIPOVA Eva FRINK Jozsef Pal GAFTA Dan GEORGIEVA Mariya GERMANY Markus S. GOIA Irina GUMUS Media HENNEKENS Stephan M. JANISOVA Monika KNOLLOVÁ Ilona KOLEVA Viktoriya KOSTADINOVA Sofia KUZMANOVIC Nevena LOOS Jacqueline MARDARI Constantin MICHL Thomas NEBLEA Monica Angela NICOARA Roxana Ion NOVÁK Pavel OLLERER Kinga ONETE Marilena PALPURINA Salza PAULINI Inge PEDASHENKO Hristo PUSCAS Mihai ROMAN Anamaria SIBIK Jozef SIRBU Culita STANCU Daniela Ileana SUTCLIFFE Laura M. E. SZABO Anna TOMESCU Cezar-Valentin TOTEV Cezar-Valentin TSVETANOV Borislav TURTUREANU Pavel Dan VASSILEVA Plamena VELEV Nikolay DENGLER Juergen
Year of publication	2018
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Phytocoenologia
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Science
Citation
Web	http://dx.doi.org/10.1127/phyto/2017/0229
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1127/phyto/2017/0229
Keywords	ecoinformatics; European Vegetation Archive (EVA); grassland vegetation; phytosociology; releve; Romanian Grassland Database (RGD); sPlot; Turboveg; vegetation classification; vegetation-plot data
Description	This report describes the Romanian Grassland Database (RGD), registered under EU-RO-008 in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD). This collaborative initiative aims to collect all available vegetation-plot data (releves) of grasslands and other open habitats from the territory of Romania to provide them for science, nationally and internationally, e.g. via the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and the global database "sPlot". The database mainly contains vegetation-plots from not only wet, mesic, dry, saline, alpine and rocky grasslands, but also other vegetation types like heathlands, mires, ruderal, segetal, aquatic and cryptogamdominated vegetation. Currently, 21,685 releves have mainly been digitised from literature sources (90%), while the remainder comes from individual unpublished sources (10%). We report on the background and history of the RGD, explain its "Data Property and Governance Rules" under which data are contributed and retrieved, and outline how the RGD can contribute to research in the fields of vegetation ecology, macroecology and conservation.