Palaearctic Grasslands 43 (October 2019) 23 DOI: 10.21570/EDGG.PG.43.23-37 Research Article Alpine grassland vegetation at Gornergrat (Canton of Valais, Switzerland): Vegetation mapping for environ- mental planning Jonathan Pachlatko1*, Martin Wyttenbach1, & Jürgen Dengler1,2,3 1 Institute of Natural Resource Sciences (IUNR), Zurich University of Applied 3 German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena- Sciences (ZHAW), Grüentalstr. 14, 8820 Wädenswil, Switzerland; jonathan Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
[email protected] (J. Pachlatko),
[email protected] (M. Wyt- *) Corresponding author jonathan
[email protected] tenbach),
[email protected] (J. Dengler) 2 Plant Ecology, Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER), University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstr. 30, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany;
[email protected] Palaearctic Grasslands 43 (2019): 23-37 Abstract: Alpine landscapes are increasingly used by tourism. At the highly frequented Gornergrat in Switzerland there was a need to develop a concept to demerge the paths of hikers and mountain bikers and thus enable a conflict-free use for all user groups. The pre- sent study aimed at providing vegetation maps of the sensible areas at Gornergrat to derive recommendations for the planning and res- toration of the new trail network. For this purpose, we sampled 32 vegetation plots (10 m²). These were then subjected to TWINSPAN classification, and the derived five units characterized by their diagnostic species based on standardized phi-values. We used ANOVA to test for differences of these units with regard to environmental parameters. The five distinguished vegetation units were assigned to syntaxa down to the alliance level.