The GLORIA Multi-Summit Approach
At the GLORIA Conference 2010 Sept. 23-26, Perth, Scotland, around 100 members of GLORIA agreed on a refined and streamlined catalogue of methods resulting from the field experience of the first decade of GLORIA.
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In summary, the components of GLORIA's Multi-Summit approach were divided into the two groups 'obligatory' and 'optional'.
Obligatory activities
- Species (vascular plants) recording in 16 1m x 1m quadrats:
- visual cover estimation
- point framing (100 points per quadrat as a new application)
- Species recording in 8 Summit-Area-Sections + abundance estimation defined on an ordinal scale (r!, very rare; r, rare; s, scattered; c, common; d, dominant)
- A careful photo documentation of plots and summit set-up
- Continuous soil temperature measurements (4 points per summit site)
Optional activities (in addition to the obligatory activities)
- Bryophytes and lichens recording
- Subplot-frequency of species in 1m x 1m quadrats (previously this was a standard method)
- Increase of 1m x 1m quadrats up to 32 per summit site
- Estimation of species cover in Summit-Area-Sections
- Line-pointing in 10-m squares (4 per summit)
The new Field Manual v5 also lists a variety of additional activities (Invertebrates monitoring, plant functional types, transects, traditional knowledge, socio-economic aspects) as defined at the conference in workgroups or already applied at some sites.