Abstract
Patterns of floristic diversity at multi-scales are rarely known in the Japanese rural Yatsu-landscapes. We examined patterns in plant species richness at the scale of landscape (a small catchment area), landscape element (woodland, levee and traditional verge meadow), and plot, to identify the contribution of smaller spatial scales influencing the diversity at landscape scale. Results showed that woodlands had the highest richness of unique species, defined as those which occurred in only one landscape element, followed by verge meadows, while overall richness was greatest in the meadows. At the plot scale woodlands and verge meadows had similar richness in unique species, while the variation of the number of species was greater in the meadows. Bright plots in the meadows had the highest richness of unique species, whereas several plots in the meadows had few unique species. In verge meadows, understanding patterns at the plot scale would be relatively high contribution to the diversity at landscape level. In woodlands, averagely large, but absence of plots with extremely large number of unique species indicate less contribution of any single plot to the species richness at the landscape scale, implying the importance of conserving more than one plot in any vegetation types within the landscape element.
