In this article, we investigate the potential for detection and characterization of sinkholes under dense forest cover by using airborne laser scanning data. Laser pulse returns from the ground ...provide important data for the estimation of digital elevation model (DEM), which can be used for further processing. The main objectives of this study were to map and determine the geomorphometric characteristics of a large number of sinkholes and to investigate the correlations between geomorphology and vegetation in areas with such characteristics. The selected study area has very low anthropogenic influences and is particularly suitable for studying undisturbed karst sinkholes. The information extracted from this study regarding the shapes and depths of sinkholes show significant directionality for both orientation of sinkholes and their distribution over the area. Furthermore, significant differences in vegetation diversity and composition occur inside and outside the sinkholes, which indicates their presence has important ecological impacts.
We conducted a phytosociological survey of pioneer shrub and shrub-wood (brushwood) communities on river banks at the contact of gravel bars and rockfall, slope debris or colluvium in the spring area ...of the Nadiža River, in the gorge of the Soča River between Srpenica and Kobarid (Log Čezsoški and Magozd), in the Tolminka valley, and in certain other locations in the hills of western Slovenia. We identified a successional sequence of two grey willow and hop hornbeam communities, which we classify into the associations
(
) and
(
). Both are indicators of natural river banks that have not been artificially stabilized. We expanded the knowledge of hop hornbeam communities in the pre-Alpine–northern-Dinaric part of Slovenia with a description of a new association
. Its sites are characterised by slightly moist soil, and its stands by a higher proportion of species of the alliance
In Govci under Mt. Poldanovec above the Trebuša Valley we found a new locality of southeastern-Alpine (Alpic) endemic
subsp.
, which is new to the flora of Slovenia and the Dinaric Alps. Its closest ...known localities are in the western Julian Prealps in Northeastern Italy. A small population of several ten shrublets occurs at elevations of about 570 m in shady, almost vertical dolomite rocks, in a stand of the endemic association
Despite a very small population we assume there are other localities in this area, where numerous gorges are very difficult to acces and have therefore not yet been sufficiently studied.
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