Mycorrhizal Patterns in the Roots of Dominant Festuca rubra in a High-Natural-Value Grassland

Life at the Top: Extensive Green Roof Plant Species and Their Traits for Urban Use

Green roofs are becoming common in cities around the world. Rooftop vegetation faces severe and unique conditions ranging from shallow substrates, high irradiance, water limitation, flooding, extreme temperatures, and strong winds. To benefit the most from this technology for improving urban climate, ecological interactions, and human life quality, it is important to have a toolbox of candidate plant species adapted to the rooftop environment. Herein, an effort was made to provide an overview of the global scenario of green roof plants. A quantitative and qualitative review examining 439 articles published within an approximate 14-year time window (2009 to mid-2023) was conducted to categorize plants amenable to use in green roof conditions, and to identify and discuss their key morphophysiological phenotypic features. This dataset allowed the establishment of archetypal green roof plants for use in different climates. Similar traits were recorded between temperate and continental climate species on one side and between tropical and dry climate plants on the other. The identified set of species and their archetypes within each major climate zone can be useful for readily adopting and expanding new green roofs and as a guideline for incorporating new taxa into this urban environmental technology.

Responses of Diversity and Productivity to Organo-Mineral Fertilizer Inputs in a High-Natural-Value Grassland, Transylvanian Plain, Romania

Ecosystems with high natural value (HNV) have generally been maintained by agricultural practices and are increasingly important for the ecosystem services that they provide and for their socio-economic impact in the ever-changing context. Biodiversity conservation is one of the main objectives of the European Green Deal, which aims to address biodiversity loss, including the potential extinction of one million species. The aim of this research was to trace the effects of organic and mineral fertilizers on the floristic composition, but also on the number of species, of the grasslands with high biodiversity (HNV) from the Transylvanian Plain, Romania. The experiments were established in 2018 on the nemoral area and analyzed the effect of a gradient of five organic and mineral treatments. Fertilization with 10 t ha⁻¹ manure or N₅₀ P₂₅K₂₅ ensures an increase in yield and has a small influence on diversity, and it could be a potential strategy for the maintenance and sustainable use of HNV grasslands. Each fertilization treatment determined species with indicator value that are very useful in the identification and management of HNV grasslands. The dry matter biomass increases proportionally as the amounts of fertilizer applied increase and the number of species decreases.