Bulgarian Vegetation Database: historic background, current status and future prospects

Abstract

For geographical and historical reasons, the Bulgarian vegetation is quite diverse. In the past and up to the beginning of the new millennium, vegetation studies have been conducted in the country basically following the dominance approach. At the end of the 1990s, however, an initiative was started to collect new field data according to European floristic-ecological standards. In 1999, the Bulgarian Vegetation Database (GIVD ID EU-BG-001) was established to collect available data for getting a better insight in the diversity of Bulgarian vegetation. The database uses TURBOVEG software and is located in the Working Group for Vegetation and Habitats in the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. In September 2010, this database contained 5,901 releves, most of them related to grasslands. The major part of the data has been collected after 2000. The geographic distribution of the field data over the country is uneven. Most of the data are derived from particular projects and gathered at locations with a relatively undisturbed environment. Altogether, thirty authors have contributed to the field sampling. Some 25.5% of the releves were taken from the literature. It has been estimated that some additional 2,900 releves can be derived from the literature and unpublished sources. For the purposes of the database, a full list of expected syntaxa for Bulgaria has been prepared.