Records of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens from the 15th EDGG Field Workshop “Grasslands and coastal habitats of Southern Ukraine”

Study Extent

The dataset contains co-occurrences of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens recorded during the 15th EDGG Field Workshop in Southern Ukraine. The study area is situated in the central-southern part of the Black Sea Lowland in the southern part of the steppe zone of Ukraine, in Kherson and Mykolaiv administrative regions. During the sampling, we surveyed the following protected areas: Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, Azov-Syvash National Nature Park, Dzharylgach National Nature Park, Biloberezhzhia Sviatoslava National Nature Park, Oleshkivski Pisky National Nature Park, Kamianska Sich National Nature Park.

Sampling

To obtain this dataset, we sampled 239 plots which had an area of 10 m2 (175 plots), 100 m2 (49 plots) and 1000 m2 (15 plots). The plots of larger size (100 and 1000 m2) which include smaller plots are marked as parent events in the Event Core. Sampling locations were chosen to cover different types of natural and seminatural open grassland habitats within the study area. In each plot, we recorded occurrences of vascular plants (shoot presence), all terricolous soil-growing bryophytes and lichens. For several plots, epiphytic lichens on woody plants were also registered. For each 10-m2 plot, several environmental and structural parameters were recorded: cover of vegetation layers and of litter, rocks, slope, aspect, inclination, shrub layer height and herb layer height. Additionally, the complete relevés with 7-8 nested-plot biodiversity series collected during the 15th EDGG Field Workshop following the EDGG methodology (Dengler et al. 2021) are available in the GrassPlot database (Dengler et al. 2018).

Quality Control

Some specimens of the vascular plants and almost all lichens and mosses were collected as herbarium for determination and verification after the fieldwork. After digitizing the data, we harmonised the taxonomic information according to the nomenclature sources: for vascular plants - Nomenclatural Checklist of vascular plants of Ukraine (Mosyakin & Fedoronchuk 1999), for bryophytes - An annotated checklist of bryophytes of Europe, Macaronesia and Cyprus (Hodgetts et al. 2020), and for lichens – The fourth checklist of Ukrainian Lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi with analysis of current additions (Kondratyuk et al. 2021). Then we used GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (GBIF species matching tool: https://www.gbif.org/tools/species-lookup) for the taxonomic check and implemented minor corrections of species names regarding misprints and problematic taxa to avoid misinterpretation. We additionally checked and verified the header data of vegetation plots (Event Core and GBIF Relevé Extension, Occurrence Extension) using OpenRefine (https://openrefine.org/), R (R Core Team 2022) and QGIS 3.22 (https://qgis.org) for quality control.

Method steps

1. Site selection, field research.
2. Identification of herbarium specimens of vascular plants, lichens, bryophytes.
3. Digitizing the field data forms.
4. Data checking and cleaning.
5. Transformation of the dataset according to the Darwin Core standards.
6. Taxonomic check, final quality control.

Vascular plants (Plantae, Tracheophyta - Polypodiopsida, Gnetopsida, Liliopsida, Magnoliopsida), Mosses (Plantae - Bryophyta, Marchantiophyta), Lichens (Fungi, Ascomycota).

1. Plantae
   rank: kingdom
2. Tracheophyta
   rank: phylum
3. Polypodiopsida
   rank: class
4. Gnetopsida
   rank: class
5. Liliopsida
   rank: class
6. Magnoliopsida
   rank: class
7. Bryophyta
   rank: phylum
8. Marchantiophyta
   rank: phylum
9. Fungi
   rank: kingdom
10. Ascomycota
    rank: phylum

Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, Southern Ukraine.