Past landscape features may be captured by historical floristic data. A case study in northern Italy

ABSTRACT

Historical floras, i.e. lists of plant species recorded in a given geographical area, are not usually considered for capturing past landscape features. In this study, we tested the usefulness of the simultaneous use of historical floristic data and a coeval topographic map to evaluate the main features of the past vegetation landscape and the potential of such data in change detection. Our study site was the Monte Fumaiolo area (northern Italy), where historical floristic data were independently recorded by two famous botanists during the 1930s. Past floristic data were then compared with current cartographic and vegetation data.

Despite the fact that the two authors explored a comparable area, they significantly differed in the use of toponyms and in the distribution of floristic records among toponyms. This is reflected by a low floristic similarity at the toponym level between the two data sets. Nevertheless, the species classification into ecological categories allowed to highlight how the two authors recorded similar information on the landscape features. However, the use of these floristic data may have some flaws in landscape change detection.

KEYWORDS:

• Floristic investigations
• topographic maps
• landscape history
• beech woods
• phytosociology
• toponyms

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Leonardo Moretti (Fumaiolo Sentieri association), who provided them with the current map of the paths. Prof. Juri Nascimbene and Prof. Davide Ubaldi offered precious suggestions to improve the manuscript. Dr. Sara Masi helped them with the digitization of the spatial data. Prof. Giovanni Tosatti helped them with the English version of the geological notes. Dr. Michael Webb kindly revised the original English text. Finally, the authors are grateful to all students and collaborators who helped to collect field data: Dr. Massimo Milandri, Dr. Alessandra Lombini, Dr. Maurizio Sirotti and, in particular, Dr. Davide Barlotti and Dr. Maria Chiara Campedelli.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at here

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by academic institutional funds of the Università di Bologna (person in charge G. Pezzi).

Notes on contributors

Fabrizio Buldrini

F. Buldrini, Ph.D., is research fellow at the Università di Bologna. His studies concern floristics and plant diversity conservation.

Enrico Muzzi

E. Muzzi is researcher at the Università di Bologna. His studies concern restoration forestry (with special attention to soil evolution and renaturalisation), reforestation of mineral substrates, biometrical data analysis and geostatistics.

Giovanna Pezzi

G. Pezzi is researcher at the Università di Bologna. Her studies concern multi-scalar and multi-temporal analyses of landscapes and habitats with a different degree of naturalness, image analysis and vegetation/land cover mapping.

All the three authors collaborated together in data elaboration and interpretation and in writing the article.