Ecological Importance and Conservation Status
Golden oak offers soil stabilisation against erosion due to its ability to colonize stony and rocky slopes. In its distribution area, Quercus alnifolia is the most important broadleaved species forming forest stands, while the major part of Cypriot forests are covered by conifers (Pinus brutia). Thick stands of Quercus alnifolia in mesic habitats, considerably modify the humidity conditions of the site and form forest soils with "mull" humus favouring the existence of sciophilous herbal species.
Golden oak is protected by the forest law of Cyprus, while the habitat type "Scrub and low forest vegetation of Quercus alnifolia (9390)" is a priority habitat of Europe (directive 92/43/EEC) . Large forest expanses of the species have been proposed for inclusion in the Natura 2000 ecological network of the European Union.
Read more about this topic: Quercus Alnifolia
Famous quotes containing the words ecological, importance, conservation and/or status:
“The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.”
—Midge Decter (b. 1927)
“For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)