Vegetation diversity in the Swiss Alps: impressions from the 16th EDGG Field Workshop

摘要: 87 Palaearctic Grasslands 52 (February 2022) of grasslands and other non-forested habitats. Field workshop participants are excited when finding 10 species within a single square centimetre and are thrilled to determine tiny, non-flowering plants. Many participants have become “addicted” to the Field Workshops, and try not to miss a single one, wherever it is conducted. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large Field Workshop planned for May 2020 in Ukraine had to be cancelled. When the situation improved somewhat in autumn 2020, a few members organised a spontaneous Field Workshop dedicated to the grasslands and other open vegetation of the subalpine and alpine belts of the Swiss Alps. Up to then, EDGG Field Workshops had been focused on dry grasslands sensu lato, and this was the first event where the focus was shifted to other vegetation types hitherto underrepresented in GrassPlot. The regular Field Workshop along the Ukrainian latitudinal transect was postponed to May 2021, but again had to be cancelled. Instead, a few members of the EDGG conducted two ad hoc Field Workshops, one in Southern Ukraine in May and a second in Switzerland in September. We considered them “ad hoc” as they were planned spontaneously at short notice, without a regular application scheme and without financial support from EDGG or IAVS. Since both were nevertheless very effective in sampling standard EDGG data, the EDGG Field Workshop Coordinators have meanwhile agreed to give them an official number post hoc.The 16th EDGG Field Workshop took place in the Swiss Alps from 12 to 22 September 2021. In total …