300480 VO Syntaxonomy (2007W)

This lecture is about the theoretical background and methodology of syntaxonomy. Topics: the plant community and its habitat, the aim of biological systematics, plant communities as fuzzy sets, history of syntaxonomy, the association concept, character- and differential species, constancy and fidelity, higher syntaxa, nomenclature, sampling design, deductive and inductive classification, how to use synoptic literature, vegetation databases, numerical methods, table work, presentation of results. Examples from beech forests, dry grasslands.