De ekologiskt betydelsefulla småbiotoperna blir allt färre i det moderna jordbruket på grund av intensifieringen av jordbrukslandskapet som resulterat i ett allt mer fragmenterat landskap. För att kunna ge småbiotoper, såsom åkerholmar, ett optimalt skydd behövs flera studier om organismerna på holmarna, deras diversitet och spridning. I denna undersökning studeras artrikedomen av mossor och lavar på busk- och trädbekädda samt öppna åkerholmar i ett öppet- och ett skogsdominerat landskap. Analysen av artrikedom i studien tyder på att de finns fler arter av mossor och lavar i det öppna landskapet i förhållande till det skogsdominerade landskapet samt på de åkerholmarna som saknade busk- och trädvegetation. Dessa miljöer består av torr och stenig mark och växer igen relativt långsamt, vilket är gynnsamt för vissa mossor och lavar. Det fanns ingen signifikant korrelation mellan diversitet och storleken på åkerholmarna eller mellan diversitet och holmarnas avstånd till skog. Antalet arter i ett habitat kan bero på regionala artpoolen samt antalet potentiella kolonisatörer men även lokala processer. Vidare är det viktigt att nämna att studien tyder på att diversitet av mossor och lavar påverkas av förhållandena på holmarna, såsom busk- och trädtäckningen. Detta i kombination med en variation inom dessa små biotoper kan skapa goda förutsättningar för ett landskap med hög diversitet. / The ecologically important small remnant habitats are becoming fewer in modern agriculture due to the intensification of agricultural landscapes that have resulted in an increasingly fragmented landscape. In order to provide an ideal conservation framework for small habitats, such as midfield islets, several studies about the organisms on the islets, their diversity and distribution are needed. In this study I investigated the diversity of mosses and lichens on open midfield islets with and without shrubs and trees in an open and a forest-dominated landscape. The analysis of species diversity in the study suggests that, overall; there are more species of mosses and lichens in the open landscape in relation to the forest-dominated landscape, and on the opened islets lacking shrub and tree vegetation. These environments consist of dry and rocky soils and overgrow relatively slowly, which is favourable for mosses and lichens. There was no significant correlation between diversity and size of the midfield islets or their distance to forest. The number of species in a habitat may depend on regional species pool and the number of potential colonizers but also local processes. Furthermore, it is important to mention that the study suggests that the diversity of mosses and lichens is influenced by the conditions on the midfield islands, such as shrub and tree cover. These conditions, combined with a variation within these small habitats can create good conditions for a landscape with high diversity.

Les champignons mycorhiziens arbusculaires (CMA) appartiennent au phylum Glomeromycota. Ces champignons forment une association symbiotique (obligatoire pour les champignons) avec plus de 80 % des espèces de plantes vasculaires, incluant la plupart des plantes cultivées. Cette symbiose mycorhizienne arbusculaire, très répandue dans la nature, a été retrouvée dans presque tous les écosystèmes terrestres aussi bien dans des déserts chauds et froids que dans des forêts tropicales ou tempérées. L’emploi d’outils de biologie moléculaire et des fossiles ont permis d’estimer la date de l’origine de la symbiose mycorhizienne arbusculaire à environ 450 millions d’années avant notre ère. Cette date coïncide avec l’apparition des premières plantes terrestres primitives. Il existe plusieurs types de mycorhizes impliquant différents champignons et différentes plantes hôtes. Ces différents faits suggèrent que les plantes vasculaires et les champignons mycorhiziens à arbuscules ont co-évolué, et que les Glomeromycota ont influencé la capacité des plantes à coloniser le milieu terrestre. Plusieurs études ont montré que les contaminants organiques peuvent influer négativement cette relation mutuellement bénéfique qu'entretiennent la plante et le champignon conduisant à une diminution de la croissance du CMA mais aussi à une modification des interactions au sein de la communauté de CMA elle-même. Ainsi, mon projet de maîtrise vise à quantifier la diversité mycorhizienne arbusculaire de deux espèces de plante Eleocharis obtusa et Panicum capillare qui poussent dans un bassin hautement contaminé par des hydrocarbures pétroliers de façon très hétérogène et étudier les structures des communautés des CMA dans des échantillons de sol rhizosphérique et de racines de celles-ci. L'un des résultats important de mon étude est la découverte d’une très grande diversité des CMA associés à E. obtusa et P. capillare dans ce milieu contaminé. En effet, pas moins de 26 unités taxonomiques opérationnelles (OTU) de champignons mycorhiziens à arbuscules ont été recensés. La quasi-totalité des familles de Glomeroycota sont représentées à l'exception de Ambisporaceae, Geosiphonaceae et Pacisporaceae. Ainsi, le genre Diversispora domine la communauté des CMA par son abondance relative, cependant le genre Claroideoglomus est le plus abondant des genres des CMA. Ensuite, mon projet a déterminé l'influence de la plante hôte sur la composition de la communauté de CMA. D'après l'analyse de la diversité alpha, les plantes présentent une structure de diversité différente. Les valeurs de Local Contributions to beta Diveristy (LCBD) élevées étaient souvent liées à un site avec un grand nombre de taxons de CMA. En utilisant une analyse en composante principale (ACP), j’ai constaté que les échantillons récoltés en 2011 auraient sensiblement la même composition en OTU. J’ai pu observer également une variation de la communauté des OTU de CMA d'une année à l'autre pour les plantes. La rhizosphère des plantes récoltées la même année avait une communauté d'OTU similaire globalement, pourtant au niveau racinaire, j’ai observé une spécificité chez des certains OTU. Cette étude fournit une vue d’ensemble de la diversité des CMA associés à des végétaux localisés dans les sédiments très polluées. Elle suggère aussi que les CMA peuvent être des candidats microbiens potentiellement importants dans la restauration des sols contaminés par le pétrole. / The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) belong to phylum Glomeromycota, a group of early divergent fungal lineage. These fungi form a mutualistic symbiotic association with more than 80% of vascular plant species, including most important crops. The arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis is widespread and has been found in almost all terestrial ecosystems on earth such as hot and cold deserts, as well as tropical and temperate forests. The use of molecular biology tools and fossil records dated back the origin of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis to 460 million years ago, which coincides with the emergence of terrestrial plants. There are several types of mycorrhizas depending on fungal groups and host plants. It has been suggested that vascular plants and AMF have co-evolved and that Glomeromycota helped plant ancestors to colonize the land. It has been reported that organic contaminants can negatively impact this mutually beneficial symbiosis between plant and fungi reducing the growth of the AMF and changing the structure of AMF communities. The objective of my master project was to determine the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi associated with two plant species, Eleocharis obtusa and Panicum capillare, which spontaneously growing a highly petroleum hydrocarbons contaminated basin with an heterogeneous pattern of contamination, and to describe the structures of their communities in their rhizosphere soils and roots. My results revealed an unexpected high diversity of AMF OTUs associated with two plant species. Indeed, we identified 26 OTUs of AMF. This diversity covered the most important families of Glomeroycota except Ambisporaceae, Geosiphonaceae and Pacisporaceae. Genus Diversispora dominated the AMF community by its relative abundance, however the genus Claroideoglomus was the most represented in the samples. My study determined the influence of the host plant on the composition of the AMF community. Based on the analysis of the α diversity, we found that the rhizospheric soil and root samples showed different community structures between the two plants species. β diversity analysis showed that high Local Contributions to β Diveristy (LCBD) values (high uniqueness of species composition) were often linked to the sample with a large number of AMF taxa. Using a principal component analysis (PCA), we found that the samples collected in 2011 have approximately the same composition of OTUs. It is likely that a turnover of AMF OTU and 4 plants may occur from one year to another. This study provides an overview of the diversity of AMF associated with plants located in heavily polluted sediments. It also suggests that AMF may be potentially important microbial candidates in the remediation of oil-contaminated soils.

Grasslands are one of the most important ecosystems on Earth, covering approximately one-third of the Earth’s surface. Grassland biodiversity is important as many services provided by such ecosystems are crucial for the human economy and well-being. Given the importance of grasslands ecosystems, in recent years research has been carried out on the potential to monitor them with novel remote sensing techniques. Improved detectors technology and novel sensors providing fine-scale hyperspectral imagery have been enabling new methods to monitor plant traits (PTs) and biodiversity. The aims of the work were to study different approaches to monitor key grassland PTs such as Leaf Area Index (LAI) and biodiversity-related traits. The thesis consists of 3 parts: 1) Evaluating the performance of remote sensing methods to estimate LAI in grassland ecosystems, 2) Estimating plant biodiversity by using the optical diversity approach in grassland ecosystems, and 3) Investigating the relationship between PTs variability with alpha and beta diversity for the applicability of the optical diversity approach in a subalpine grassland of the Italian Alps To evaluate the performance of remote sensing methods to estimate LAI, temporal and spatial observations of hyperspectral reflectance and LAI were analyzed at a grassland site in Monte Bondone, Italy (IT-MBo). In 2018, ground temporal observations of hyperspectral reflectance and LAI were carried out at a grassland site in Neustift, Austria (AT-NEU). To estimate biodiversity, in 2018 and 2019 a floristics survey was conducted to determine species composition and hyperspectral data were acquired at two grassland sites: IT-MBo and University of Padova’s Experimental Farm, Legnaro, Padua, Italy (IT-PD) respectively. Furthermore, in 2018, biochemistry analysis of the biomass samples collected from the grassland site IT-MBo was carried out to determine the foliar biochemical PTs variability. The results of the thesis demonstrated that the grassland spectral response across different spectral regions (Visible: VIS, red-edge: RE, Near-infrared: NIR) showed to be both site-specific and scale-dependent. In the first part of the thesis, the performance of spectral vegetation indices (SVIs) based on visible, red-edge (RE), and NIR bands alongside SVIs solely based or NIR-shoulder bands (wavelengths 750 - 900 nm) was evaluated. A strong correlation (R2 > 0.8) was observed between grassland LAI and both RE and NIR-shoulder SVIs on a temporal basis, but not on a spatial basis. Using the PROSAIL Radiative Transfer Model (RTM), it was demonstrated that grassland structural heterogeneity strongly affects the ability to retrieve LAI, with high uncertainties due to structural and biochemical PTs co-variation. In the second part, the applicability of the spectral variability hypothesis (SVH) was questioned and highlighted the challenges to use high-resolution hyperspectral images to estimate biodiversity in complex grassland ecosystems. It was reported that the relationship between biodiversity (Shannon, Richness, Simpson, and Evenness) and optical diversity metrics (Coefficient of variation (CV) and Standard deviation (SD)) is not consistent across plant communities. The results of the second part suggested that biodiversity in terms of species richness could be estimated by optical diversity metrics with an R2 = 0.4 at the IT-PD site where the grassland plots were artificially established and are showing a lower structure and complexity from the natural grassland plant communities. On the other hand, in the natural ecosystems at IT-MBo, it was more difficult to estimate biodiversity indices, probably due to structural and biochemical PTs co-variation. The effects of canopy non-vegetative elements (flowers and dead material), shadow pixels, and overexposed pixels on the relationship between optical diversity metrics and biodiversity indices were highlighted. In the third part, we examined the relationship between PTs variability (at both local and community scales, measured by standard deviation and by the Euclidean distances of the biochemical and biophysical PTs respectively) and taxonomic diversity (both α-diversity and β-diversity, measured by Shannon’s index and by Jaccard dissimilarity index of the species, families, and functional groups percent cover respectively) in Monte Bondone, Trentino province, Italy. The results of the study showed that the PTs variability metrics at alpha scale were not correlated with α-diversity. However, the results at the community scale (β-diversity) showed that some of the investigated biochemical and biophysical PTs variations metrics were associated with β-diversity. The SVH approach was also tested to estimate β-diversity and we found that spectral diversity calculated by spectral angular mapper (SAM) showed to be a better proxy of biodiversity in the same ecosystem where the spectral diversity failed to estimate alpha diversity, this leading to the conclusion that the link between functional and species diversity may be an indicator of the applicability of optical sampling methods to estimate biodiversity. The findings of the thesis highlighted that grassland structural heterogeneity strongly affects the ability to retrieve both LAI and biodiversity, with high uncertainties due to structural and biochemical PTs co-variation at complex grassland ecosystems. In this context, the uncertainties of satellite-based products (e.g., LAI) in monitoring grassland canopies characterized by either spatially or temporally varying structure need to be carefully taken into account. The results of the study highlighted that the poor performance of optical diversity proxies in estimating biodiversity in structurally heterogeneous grasslands might be due to the complex relationships between functional diversity and biodiversity, rather than the impossibility to detect functional diversity with spectral proxies.