34 - Steppes and dry calcareous grasslands (Classification Paléarctique (PHYSIS 2001))

34 - Steppes and dry calcareous grasslands

Classification des habitats du Paléarctique (2001)

Description

Primary and secondary steppes, formations dominated by medium or tall perennnial tuft-forming grasses or suffrutescents, with lacunar ground cover, together with their associated therophyte communities; typical formations, with two periods of dormancy, in large part climactic, are characteristic of a steppe belt in continental Central Eurasia and on the western Asian plateaux, with irradiations in the nemoral zone; physiognomically similar formations, although perhaps largely anthropogenic, and mostly with a single period of dormancy, are widespread in the transition zone between the Mediterranean and Saharo-Sindian domaines and occur locally in the Mediterranean zone. By extension, 34 also includes dry thermophilous, mostly zoogenous, grasslands and thermophile forest fringe formations of the lowland, hill and montane altitudinal levels of the nemoral and Mediterranean zones, on mostly calcareous soils, sands, and decomposed rock surfaces.

Bibliographie

Devillers P., Devillers-Terschuren J. & Vander Linden C., 2001. PHYSIS Palaearctic Habitat Classification Database. Updated to 10 December 2001. Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles, Bruxelles. (Source)

Soo, 1959, 1980; Ellenberg, 1963, 1988; Zohary, 1973; Knapp, 1973; Horvat & al., 1974; Walter, 1974; Rivas-Martinez, 1977a; Wolkinger and Plank, 1981; Brullo, 1985; Polunin and Walters, 1985; Le Houérou, 1986; Walter and Breckle, 1986, 1991c; Peinado Lorca and Rivas-Martinez, 1987; Rieley and Page, 1990; Korotkov & al., 1991; Ripley, 1992a.