Use of plant functional groups to study land use changes in semiarid Mediterranean rangelands

The aim of this paper was to study the changes caused by the abandonment and/ or extensification of traditional land uses in Mediterranean rangelands through the changes of easily identified plant functional groups. Four treatments, which reflect the stages of rangeland evolution after abandonment, were studied in Lagadas county of Thessaloniki: abandoned arable field, grassland, open shrubland and dense shrubland. In these treatments, species frequency was measured. Species were separated into functional groups according to their life cycle, photosynthetic cycle and growth form and the contribution of each group into each treatment was calculated. It was found that early stages of abandonment were dominated by annual, C3 therophyte species. In the advanced stages, perennial hemicryptophyte species prevailed. C4 grasses had a strong presence in the intermediate stages.