Die Vegetation der Wälder, Wiesen und Trockenrasen des Nationalparks Thayatal – ein erster Überblick

Abstract Vegetation of forests, meadows and dry grasslands in the Thayatal National Park – a first overview With the forests, meadows and meadow-fallows as well as the forest-free dry grasslands the most important terrestrial habitats of the Thayatal National Park could be documented with respect to their vegetation ecology in the period from 2000 to 2006. Thus a knowledge gap existing for the Austrian portion of this important nature area was closed, after the Czech Podyjí National Park had already been thoroughly worked on starting from 1989. In the context of stocktakings for conservation planning and nature space management a complete field survey of all meadows and meadow-fallows as well as all forest-free dry grasslands were accomplished after previous aerial photointerpretation. The treatment of the expanded forests took place with the help of a stratified sample, with which 200 points were selected with, representing the high lithological and geomorphologic variety of the investigation area. Altogether 534 vegetation relevees were taken and classified with the help of multivariate procedures. As a result 54 vegetation types could be differentiated and 37 plant communities on the level of association and/or subassociation could be identified. For 17 types no suitable literature references were found, a provisional description and a provisional syntaxonomic allocation were made in these cases. The latter is pointing at further research need, particularly within habitats which are currently submitted to successional changes in species composition.