Potential replacement vegetation: an approach to vegetation mapping of cultural landscapes

Abstract. The concept of mapping potential replacement vegetation (PRV) is proposed as a parallel to potential natural vegetation (PNV). Potential replacement vegetation (PRV) is an abstract and hypothetical vegetation which is in balance with climatic and soil factors currently affecting a given habitat, with environmental factors influencing the habitat from outside such as air pollution, and with an abstract anthropogenic influence (management) of given type, frequency and intensity. For every habitat, there is a series of possible PRV‐types corresponding to the different anthropogenic influences, e.g. grazing, mowing, trampling or growing cereals.The PRV‐concept is especially useful in large‐scale mapping (scales > 1 : 25 000) of small areas where replacement vegetation is the focus of attention for managers and land‐use planners, for example in nature reserves where the aim is conservation of replacement vegetation managed in a traditional way, or in restoration ecology where the concept may be used for defining restoration goals and evaluating the success of restoration efforts. At smaller scales, PRV‐mapping may be useful for revealing the biogeographical patterns of larger areas which may be different from the corresponding PNV patterns, because replacement vegetation and natural vegetation may respond to environmental gradients at different scales. An example of medium‐scale PRV‐mapping through the coincidence of diagnostic species of vegetation types, based on species distribution grid data, is presented.In cultural landscapes, the advantage of using the PRV‐concept instead of PNV is its direct relationship to the replacement vegetation. In the habitat mapping with respect to the replacement vegetation, the PRV concept yields more valuable results than the mapping of actual vegetation, as the latter is strongly affected by spatially variable anthropogenic influences which may be largely independent from climatic and soil factors.