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The role of anthropogenically influenced habitats in conserving elements
of the original wildlife has increased worldwide simultaneously with the
disappearance of natural sites. Burial places are able to conserve
original elements of the wildlife and this fact has been known for at
least a century. To this day little is known about long-time changes, and
the effect of long-time management methods in cemeteries on the flora they
harbour. The utility of historical maps in research focused on natural
values, as well as in answering questions related to conservation was
recently demonstrated, but the use of digitized historical maps in
biodiversity research of the Carpathian Basin is very limited. In the
present paper, we aimed to predict the conservation potential of
long-established and newly established cemeteries of Hungarian settlements
with various population sizes based on the digitized maps of the 2nd
Military Survey of the Austrian Empire (1819–1869), by categorizing
cemeteries into 3 distinct (anthropogenic habitat, cemetery, or natural
habitat) types. To build our models we used records of the protected flora
from Hungarian cemeteries, based on data of thematic botanical surveys of
991 cemeteries. Out of the surveyed cemeteries 553 (56%) harboured
protected plants, totalling 306.617 estimated individuals of 92 protected
species, belonging to 28 plant families. These species represent 12% of
the entire protected flora of Hungary. Hungarian cemeteries play a key
role mainly in preserving steppe and dry grassland plant
species.Long-established and large cemeteries harbour more protected plant
species than small and newly established ones.Human population size of the
settlements correlated negatively with the number of protected species and
individuals. Moreover, woodland cover and proportion of grassland, also
significantly positively affected the number of protected plant species in
cemeteries.
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