ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY
OF THESSALONIKI
Marie Curie Training Site
Assessment of Grazing Effects on Desertification Risk
in Mediterranean Rangelands
(GrazeMed)
DESCRIPTION OF THE TRAINING SITE
The Marie Curie Training Site GrazeMed is the Department of Range Science and WildlifeFreshwater Fisheries. It is one of the five Departments of the School of Forestry and Natural
Environment at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It is a unique Department not only in Greece
but in the whole Europe combining education and research on rangelands, wildlife and freshwater
fisheries. It is divided into three Laboratories, which are responsible for carrying out the research,
namely: Laboratory of Rangeland Ecology, Laboratory of Rangeland management and Laboratory of
Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.
The staff of the Department is broken down as follows:
1. Faculty members: 9
2. Teaching assistants: 4
3. Technical and administrative staff: 3
Faculty members supervise about 20 post-graduate students.
The Marie Curie Training Site is located at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Aristotle
University is the largest academic unit in Greece with more than 60.000 undergraduate students, about
2.000 graduate students, 2.000 faculty members and about 700 administrative staff. It was founded in
1925. It has 43 schools of various disciplines, including theology, philosophy, life science, law and
economics, geotechnical sciences, medicine, engineering, fine arts, athletics, journalism and
education. It owns a central library, a restaurant, dormitories for the students and several training sites
outside Thessaloniki such as farms, forests and veterinarian clinics. Finally, it administers more than
1,500 research projects, which cover humanistic, life and applied sciences while it is involved in
several other European projects including Socrates, Lingua and Comett. Thessaloniki is the second
largest city in Greece with more than one million inhabitants and the capital of northern Greece
(Macedonia and Thrace).
MCTS GrazeMed with its three laboratories is well equipped to conduct research in ecology,
ecophysiology and nutrition in rangelands as well as in landscape ecology, and wildlife and freshwater
fisheries management. The research facilities include full equipment for field ecological studies in the
University forests and rangelands as well as in other parts of Macedonia and the whole Greece;
necessary hardware and software for landscape analysis studies; laboratory equipment for
ecophysiological studies of range plants; laboratory equipment for evaluation of the nutritive value of
range plants; and field and laboratory equipment for studying big and small game species, as well as
wild and farmed freshwater fishes. These facilities are available to both the staff and the graduate
students.
MCTS GrazeMed is involved in several research activities. The current projects related to the
subject of training are the following:
National
· Productivity of subalpine grasslands in western Macedonia
· Special management plan of subalpine grasslands in Grammos mountain
International
· GEORANGE: Geomatics in the assessment and sustainable management of Mediterranean
rangelands (EVK-CT-2000-00091)
· SAFE: Silvoarable agroforestry for Europe (QLRT-2000-00560)
· GLORIA: Global observation research initiative in alpine environments (EVK2-200000522)
· VISTA: Vulnerability of ecosystem services to land use change in traditional agricultural
landscapes (EVK2-2001-000356)
More than 20 graduate courses are taught in a 2-year period by the staff of the Training Site. Of
those, related to the subject of the doctoral training are the following:
Course
Dynamics of range vegetation
Rangeland use and environment
Range methodology
Management of range ecosystems
Landscape analysis
Research methodology
Analysis of range ecosystems
Special issues of rangeland ecology
Ecology of range populations
Plant-animal interactions
Restoration of range ecosystems
Range management plan
Inventory and classification of rangelands
Semester
Year
Credits
Autumn
Autumn
Autumn
Spring
Spring
Spring
Autumn
Autumn
Autumn
Autumn
Spring
Spring
Spring
First
First
First
First
First
First
Second
Second
Second
Second
Second
Second
Second
2
2
2
2
3
3
2
2
2
2
3
2
2
DESCRIPTION OF THE DOCTORAL TRAINING
Background information
Mediterranean rangelands including grasslands, shrublands (garrigue and maquis) and open forests
cover on area of about 830,000 km2 or 52% of the whole Mediterranean area. This vast area is grazed
by 270 million sheep-equivalents including several kinds of domestic herbivores, especially ruminants
(cattle, sheep and goats) witch make up about 75% of the entire animal population.
Mediterranean rangelands have been the subject of several studies related to their grazing
management by livestock. Most of these studies suggest that grazing is essential for their sustained
productivity and that irrational management leads to deterioration and subsequently to their
desertification.
In the Mediterranean region, overgrazing is widely considered as a factor leading to
desertification, especially if it is combined with wildfires. However, undergrazing and land
abandonment may also cause adverse effects. On the other hand, in ecosystems with long history of
grazing, such as the ones found in the Mediterranean region, grazing is considered essential in
maintaining species diversity; but high stocking rate in poor soils can also decrease plant diversity.
Apart form a few studies, no quantitative information is available on how grazing is related to
desertification and especially on how desertification risk can be easily assessed in Mediterranean
rangelands so that management plans are developed for their conservation.
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Innovative aspects
In GrazeMed, we study the grazing impact on Mediterranean rangelands at different scales of
organization: from organisms, to communities, and landscapes. This novel approach will allow us to
understand the functional mechanisms of grazing impact on individual plants and on plant
communities, and at the same time to predict the effects of grazing at the landscape level. From this
combination we expect to be able to draw remedy plans for sustainable use of rangelands, in general,
in the Mediterranean region.
Traditionally, the methodology used to detect grazing affects is largely based on demographic
parameters. Unfortunately, these parameters are difficult to measure and it is necessary to perform
long lasting studies in order to assess them because they reflect climate variations and natural cycles.
So, new methods for detecting grazing impact on Mediterranean ecosystems are really needed. These
methods are based on developmental instability and fractal geometry, which provide a suitable tool for
the study and management of Mediterranean rangelands.
Developmental instability is expressed as developmental error reflected in exaggerated intraindividual variation in repeated traits and patterns. Deviations from bilateral (fluctuating asymmetry),
radial, translational and rotational symmetry, frequency of phenodeviants and fractal dimensions of
morphological characters are considered to represent measures of developmental instability and,
consequently of vitality necessary to maintain developmental precision during ontogeny.
Fractal geometry is a mathematical tool for dealing with complex systems that have no
characteristic length scale and fractal dimension is a quantitative measure of the complexity of a
system. Also, Shannon index can describe ecological diversity.
Both, developmental instability and fractal geometry have been widely used in animal
communities but their application in plant communities has not received yet adequate attention.
Specific techniques
In order to investigate the effects of livestock grazing on the desertification risk, representative
rangeland communities will be selected in northern Greece where we are going to approach as
follows:
a) Individual plant level
We will measure the developmental instability of the dominant species under different grazing
pressures (low, medium, high) and water deficit conditions. Measurements will include morphological
parameters such as floral and leaf asymmetries, internode length, node order, and calyx and floral
allometries. Developmental instability indices will be related with demographic parameters such as
flower and seed production, seed germination and plant survival.
b) Community level
Grazing may change the vegetation structure of a plant community by favoring the unpalatable
species at the expense of the more palatable ones or the most resistant at the expense of the less
resistant to this activity. Such a change may lead to a gradual homogeneration of the community and,
ultimately, to the reduction of its complexity.
In a gradient of at least three different grazing pressures (low, medium, high), we will measure the
floristic composition and structure of the vegetation in transects and random quadrates. Subsequently,
we will use the Information theory to analyze the complexity of the variously grazed rangeland
communities. Shannon Index (H´) is a general expression for statistical entropy that measures the
complexity of a system. We will use H´ and also the evenness index (J) to measure the complexity of
rangelands communities as well as the information fractal dimension for a series of quadrate size
scales (e.g. 0,75 m, 1,5 m and 3,0 m) in order to detect multifractal structures. Alternatively, we are
going to apply the Detremded Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), in order to calculate the predictability of
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the plant distribution by measuring the correlation between data sequence points in one dimensional
random walk.
c) Landscape level
Landscape analysis aims at revealing the pattern and the structure of the landscape. At the same
time, it provides information about the morphology of ecotopes.
In GrazeMed, the size, shape and diversity of patches will be analyzed to determine the shrubland
landscape and to understand the relation between vegetation structure and grazing impact. The patches
will be identified by a combination of remote sensing techniques and GIS technology. We will use
several indices of landscape structure and connectivity based on fractal geometry and information
theory, such as: Shannon index (H´), Evenness index (J), Dominance index (D), Corrected perimeter –
area (CPA), Fractal dimension (by the perimeter area or by the box counting method) and Contagion
index (C).
Benefits to fellows
The doctoral training requires an exhaustive knowledge of the study area and forces the fellows to
handle several field work methodologies: vegetation sampling, use of PSION and GPS, digital caliber,
etc. Data will be processed with different software. Fellows will learn Visual Basic, Maple V,
Statistical software (SPSS, SAS). Moreover image analysis and Microsoft Office will be used.
Landscape structure is studied through remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems
(GIS). It requires aero-photograph interpretation and land cover digitizing as well as obtaining
different thematic maps of the study area that allow landscape spatial analysis. For this propose,
Arc/info, Arcview, Idrisi and Erdas Imagine will be used.
The fellows, therefore, will be benefited by this project in many ways. Besides being exposed to
new methodologies and techniques in studying the grazing problems in Mediterranean rangelands,
they will have the opportunity to interact with the staff and the graduate students of the Training Site
in several issues and thus make use of their long experience on the ecology and management of
Mediterranean rangelands.
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