Alpha- and beta-diversity of vegetation types at the Kula volcano, Manisa

Kula Volcano is one of thirteen volcanoes in Turkey. With it?s special geological characteristics it becomes a very special and rare habitat for plant life. In history, some studies on the vegetation of Kula Volcano were published, describing a relationship between plant species, altitude and aspect, e.g. North-South. They also stress the importance of the geological material, i.e. tuff stone which only allows specialized plants to grow. However, in literature until now, these studies only gathered species lists not taking into account a sound sampling design that would allow defining and comparing different vegetation types. Furthermore, using plot-based sampling was enabled to compare important biodiversity parameters, such as species or endemich richness, the expected results of these parameters were aslo found in the cone of the volcano.The individual value of this proposal is twofold. First, the planned vegetation survey based on plot-based sampling using a stratified random sampling design provided a first vegetation type classification of the Kula Volcano vegetation. Secondly, the relationship between the vegetation types and environmental gradients determined the statistical analyzes of modern. This vegetation type map will serve as baseline data for future studies in this area. Biodiversity patterns of species and endemic richness are often related to environmental factors, such as altitude, substrate, slope or aspect. Multivariate Statistics help to quantify important relationships between alpha- and beta diversity and measured environmental factors. This will help to identify important areas of high biodiversity suitable for nature conservation, which should have a high priority in this rare volcanic habitats.The results are important for scientists and conservation management. In general, sound scientific sampling schemes combined with modern statistical analysis are important for obtaining results on an international level and therefore could serve other Turkish ecologists as a comparative study. Second, nature conservation in Turkey needs spatial information on floristic diversity, especially endemic species richness to identify biodiversity hot spots suitable for conservation.The working approach is based on a stratified random sampling design based on stratification by altitude and aspect. In each stratum (we expect 16 strata), 4-10 vegetation sampling units with a standarized size of 10 m x 10 m placed and sampled for species composition and species cover using the modified Braun Blanquet scala. The gathered field data is classified into vegetation types using phytosociological software (JUICE 7.0). Once vegetation types are defined, alpha-diversity parameters (Species richness, Shannon diversity) are analyzed using ANOVA to test whether vegetation types differ significantly in those parameters. Then, betadiversity, i.e. the differences in species composition are quantified to measure the uniquness of each vegetation type. Alpha and Beta diversity measures were analyzed with multivatriate statistics (Non-metric MultiDimensional Scaling and post-hoc correlation) to measure the relationship between environmental factors and biodiversity parameters.Keywords; Biodiversity, vegetation, classification, species richness, Shannon diversity, multivariate analysis, NMDS.