The Use of Indicator Species and Ecological Degradation Model for Condition Assessment in Turkey

Özet

Monitoring of vegetation change is essential to detect good management practices for the sustainableuse of natural rangeland resources. An understanding of how the existing species in vegetation react tomanagement methods is important for decision makers. For this reason, the vegetation changes shouldbe determined by suitable techniques. The multivariate analysis as Detrended Correspondence Analysisand Principal Components Analysis was highly examined and its results were easily interpreted to drawconclusions. A relatively homogenous data set first, a matrix of 221 species and 44 sample sites in theprovince of Yozgat in the Central Anatolia Region in year 2010, was used by detrended correspondenceanalysis (DCA). The effects of environmental variation was minimized by this method (DCA) so that themajor pattern of vegetation composition change was explained by grazing impact. Principal componentsanalysis was performed to detect the distribution of sites along the first axis, and the distance off thex-axis. Fifteen species out of the promising 89 plant species were found to be indicators. These indicatorspecies should be benefited for the vegetation change status and sustainable rangeland managementunder semiarid rangeland conditions. The fifteen plant species and bare ground showed clear responsesalong the first axis (grazing impact gradient), and became abundant over certain ranges of this axis.