Range sites of calcareous grasslands in western Macedonia, Greece

In this paper, the factors that determine the range sites haνe been investigated in limestone grasslands located in the prefectures of Kozani, Florina and Pella of westem Macedonia, Greece. The different variations of the calcareous substrate support in general dry soils with νery low water holding capacity. The small differences among the 18 study sites were deterrnined by factors related to general climate, relief-microclimate and parent rock-soil. The most important of them, however, were the physical soil characteristics while the soil chemical properties had no particular effect. lt was found that the principal factor related to grassland production was the amount of surface rocks. As a result, three range sites were identified based on the cover of surface rocks ( <30, 30- 50 and >50%) which supported different herbage production ( >1200 500-1200 and <50 kg/ha respectively) and, therefore, different grazing capacity (>1, 0.9-0.5 and <0.5 sheep/ha/year respectively).