Spring areas: ecology, vegetation, and comments on similarity coefficients applied to plant communities

• Published in: Ecography
• Main Author: Warncke, Esbern
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1980
• Subjects: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.1980.tb01226.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1600-0587.1980.tb01226.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1600-0587.1980.tb01226.x

Spring areas in Jutland, Denmark, representing gradients in physico‐chemical conditions and providing a range of stable conditions in space and time, were examined for different aspects of community biology and population biology. Special attention was paid to aspects of the dynamic equilibrium resulting from interactions between stable environments and their biological communities. Localities were chosen to represent spring areas with clear differences in ground water chemistry and where stability in hydrological conditions had existed for many years. This was ensured by confirmation of the occurrence of arctic‐boreal‐montane plant species, being late glacial relicts. The degree of environmental stability of organisms of the study areas selected was otherwise determined by examination of a number of physical factors and the chemistry of the water. Tracheophytes and bryophytes comprising the macroflora of 14 main localities were described and the microflora represented by the diatoms described from the same localities plus one reference locality, Addit. These data provided a favourable basis for ordination and grouping of the spring areas and for discussing similarity coefficients applied to biological communities in general and to ecosystem stability in particular. Factors affecting the spring areas were surveyed by studies of peat deposits, hydrostatic potentials, historical events and human impact. Brief discussions on the functional aspects of the spring areas are given in an outline of the nutrient funds within the systems and the flow of nutrients in and out of them. Glacial deposits from the quaternary Period constitute the upper 10‐150 m of land mass of Jutland, a low‐lying moraine landscape reaching a maximum altitude of only 173 m a.s.l. A general description of the hydrological situation for watercourses in the 29800 km 2 peninsula of Jutland is given, together with environmental data for each of the localities as they are located along a geological SW‐NE transect with poor sandy soils in the ...