Diversität der natürlichen Gebirgsvegetation Grönlands - "Artenvielfalt" im Niemandsland

• Published in: GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society
• Main Authors: Schwarzenbach, Fritz H., Kaiser, Sigrid, Geißdörfer, Rainer
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Oekom Publishers GmbH 1996
• Subjects: Greenland; East Greenland; Shannon
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.14512/gaia.5.3-4.8; https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia/1996/00000005/f0020003/art00008

This study analyzes the diversity of the natural vegetation in mountains of eastern and northeastern Greenland. The botanical field-work has been done during the Danish East-Greenland Expeditions (leader Dr. Lauge Koch) in the summers 1948-1952, 1954, 1956, and during three iourneys in the summers 1991, 1994 and 1995. The analysis is based on botanical observations in nine selected areas (calied "provinces A to I'~ between 70"30'N and 80"30'N. The total file has 9348 records (called "observations"). An "observation" says that at least one plant of a certain species of vascular plants has been observed at a given place. The date of the observation, the topographical position, the altitude and the exposition of the place as weilas some information on the pheno/ogy of the plant, on the local vegetation and on the documentation (photo of the plant or of the place, herbarium specimen) complete the individual records. A list of the most important variables is shown in Table 2. The records are grouped as nine subfiles corresponding to the provincesA to I. Within each subfile the numbers of observations/species are counted and expressed as percents of the total number of recordslprovince. In a next step the observations of each province are grouped according to the altitudes of the places where the plants have been observed. The definition of these altitudinal zones H1-H8 is given in Table 3. The same table shows the numbers of observations, of places and of species for the provinces and for the altitudinal subtiles. The diversity of the vegetation is based on the relative frequency of observations/species. This type of distribution is called "Arten/PräsenzVerteilung" (distribution "specieslpresence"). The diversity of sampIes is estimated by three different indices: Shannon-Index (Sh-Index), Simpson-Index (Si-Index) and the Q-Statistic. The definitions and the algorithms for the estimation are given in Table5. The Sh-Index hasa theoretical maximum value fora given combination "number of species/sample" and "number of ...