“Flowers of South-West Europe - a field guide” - de Oleg Polunin e B.E. Smythies

“Revisitas” de regiões  esquecidas no tempo - “Plant Hunting Regions” - a partir de uma obra de grande valor para o especialista e amador de botânica como da Natureza em geral.

Por

Horst Engels, Cecilia Sousa, Luísa Diniz, Nicole Engels, José Saraiva, Victor Rito

da

Associação “Trilhos d’Esplendor”

2.13 The Northern Serras of Portugal

2.13 As Serras do Norte de Portugal 2.13.5 Serra do Gerês Introdução Geografia, Clima, Geologia, Geomorfologia e Solos Bioclima, Biogeografia, Vegetação actual e potential Geologia e Geomorfologia e Solos Os Habitats da Serra da Estrela Florestas Charnecas e Matos Formações herbáceas Ambientes aquáticos Ambientes rochosos Turfeiras altas Habitats rurais Os aspectos glaciários da Serra do Gerês “Cultural Landscapes of Europe” - Serra do Gerês, uma paisagem tradicional Mudança climática e sucessão vegetational no Holocénico Acção antropogénica e degradação florestal no Holocénico A Fauna da Serra do Gerês Observação de Aves na Serra da Estrela Anexos O Sítio Gerês Lista dos Habitats

Bases de Dados: Biodiversity on the Iberian Peninsula (Parte II - Northern-Portugal)

Mapas das Serras do Norte de Portugal e do Gerês: Mapas das Serras do Norte de Portugal Serra do Gerês

Extrato do “Mapa de Solos e da Vegetação da Península Iberica.”

Moritz Willkomm (1852)

Serra do Gerês

Nevosa, o sítio mais alto (1.553m NN) da Serra do Gerês.

Minas dos Carris - antigas minas de volfrâmio na Peneda-Gerês.

2.13.5 Serra do Gerês

Map of the National Parc Peneda-Gerês (PNPG)

(Download)

Polunin & Smythies (1973) descrevem a Serra do Gerês (pp. 106-109) da seguinte forma:

The Serra do Gerês is composed of granite mountains in the north-west of Portugal , and though not the highest in the country, they are in many ways the most spectacular. Seen from the Chaves-Braga road (N 103) they rise up boldly from deep gorges, the lower slopes largely forested with pines, the upper treeless with much bare granite. The Pousada de São Bento lies just off this road to the north, and is magnificently sited with enormous views across the reservoirs deep down in the valley, and to the ranges beyond, rising above the little spa of Caldas do Gerês. A number of forest roads, unmarked on the maps, radiating from the spa, make it possible to explore much of the area by car.

Pousada de São Bento, Caniçada

Vista para a Barragem da Caniçada, Serra do Gerês

Road-Map para a Pousada de São Bento

Caldas do Gerês e outros locais de interesse

Cascata de Leonte, Portela do Homem, Gerês

A road with seventeen U-bends rises rapidly to Leonte, the watershed between the Gerês and Homem rivers, where *Narcissus triandrus is abundant in April. It then drops down through woods of Pyrenean oak, *Q. pyrenaica, and birch to Albergaria and the Ponte de S. Miguel over the river Homem. A side road leads off from the bridge up to a disused wolfram mine, called Carris, to near the top of the Serra, Altar de Cabrões.

see the fascinating walk to: Altar de Cabrões, Carris

Though not negotiable by car the whole way up, this is a lovely walk and takes one up into a highland glen ablaze with colour, mainly of *Erica arborea, *E. australis, *E. umbellata,

Polygala microphylla L.

*Chamaespartium tridentatum, and *Halimium alyssoides. *Polygala microphylla, the best of the milkworts, is common here at the northernmost limit of its range, while Thymelaea broteriana†, an attractive shrublet endemic to Portugal with numerous tiny yellow flowers and contrasting bright green heather-like leaves, also grows here. There is also some *Fritillaria lusitanica, *Tulipa australis, *Endymion hispanicus, *Narcissus bulbocodium, and the white daisy *Phalacrocarpum anomalum†.

Thymelaea broteriana†E	Erythronium dens-canis†
*Iris boissieri†E	*Phalacrocarpum anomalum†E
Prunus lusitanica†	*Saxifraga spathularis†
*Anemone trifolia subsp. albida†E	Lilium martagon†

Rare and endangered plant species (†) - some of them endemic (E) to the Peninsula Ibérica

At the higher levels the Dog's Tooth violet, Erythronium dens-canis†, grows at the most western point of its range in Europe, and is in flower from March to April, with *Crocus carpetanus. The most interesting plant in this region is *Iris boissieri†, which is endemic to these mountains. It can be found from 600 m upwards, but seems to be rare at lower elevations  and more abundant in the neighbourhood of Carris at about 1450 m. It resembles *l. filifolia (from Spain) with the same very long and narrow leaves and the same habit of growing singly up through the scrub, but the flowers are somewhat smaller and bluer, and the falls are bearded.

see the wonderful pictures in: 100 solas: Geira Romana - Mata de Albergaria

see also: Geira Romana XVIII (Download)

The road from Albergaria runs down the valley of the Homem, through lovely forests of Quercus robur, with an undergrowth of a mixture of Prunus lusitanica†, Ilex aquifolium, Acer pseudoplatanus, *Arbutus unedo, and *Amelanchier ovalis. Mossy banks dripping with water are colonized by *Saxifraga spathularis†, and the lovely blue-flowered *Omphalodes nitida†, and the early flowering *Anemone trifolia subsp. albida†. Saxifraga clusii is less common, but it sometimes forms loose cushions 2m across , covered with a cloud of small white flowers. Lilium martagon† flowers here in July.

The return to Gerês is up to the belevedere of Junceda overlooking the Gerês gorge, and back down through the woods of Pinus pinaster, where *Simethis mattiazzii and *Lithospermum diffusum are to be found . At Gerês itself the most noticeable plant is the pink and white daisy *Erigeron karvinskianus, a native of Central America now widely naturalized in Europe, which has run wild on the walls. Anarrhinum bellidifolium and *Prunella grandiflora grow beside the road, and the autumn-flowering bulbs of this area are Crocus clusii and *Merendera montana.

The most conspicuous families of plants of this region are the Leguminosae, Cistaceae, and Ericaceae and they include a number of northwestern species:

*Cytisus multiflorus	*Adenocarpus complicatus
Cytisus scoparius	*Cistus psilosepalus
*Cytisus striatus	Halimium umbellatum
Genista micrantha	*Halimium alyssoides
*Genista florida	*Tuberaria guttata
Ulex minor	*Tuberaria globularifolia
•Daboecia cantabrica	*Erica ciliaris
*Erica arborea	*E. australis
*E. umbellata	Erica cinerea
Calluna vulgaris	Erica tetralix
Vaccinium myrtillus	*Arbutus unedo

In October 1970 the Peneda-Gerês National Park was established by decree as Portugal's contribution to the International Conservation Year, and an office opened in Caldas do Gerês where a brochure and map of the park can be obtained. The construction of many kilometres of forest road, marked on the National Park map but not as yet on the usual motoring maps, has made it possible to explore much of the area by car an area of 68,000 hectares of some of the most beautiful country in Portugal, with magnificent displays of heather in June. One of the most

attractive plants of the granite areas of northern Portugal, the lemon-scented Thymus caespititius, forms low pink mats from early June here and there between the granite rocks.

Thymus caespititius Brot.

(La Serra do Gerés está formada por las montañas graníticas del noroeste de Portugal, que, aunque no son las más alt as, son en muchos aspectos las más espectaculares del país. Vistas desde la carretera de Chaves-Braga (N 103) aparecen elevándose atrevidamente desde profundas gargantas, con las lad eras inferiores cubiertas de bosque de pinos y las superiores deforestadas y con mucho granito pelado. La Pousada de Sao Benito queda justamente al norte de esta carretera; está magníficamente situada y posee enormes vistas hacia los pantanos que quedan en el fondo del valle y hacia las sierras lejan as que se levantan encima del balneario de Caldas do Gerés. Numerosas carreteras forestales, que no figuran en los mapas, irradian desde el balneario y posibilitan la exploración en coche de gran parte de la región.

Una carretera con 17 curvas en U sube rápidamente a Leonte, la vertiente de aguas entre los ríos Gerés y Homem, donde *Narcissus triandrus abunda en abril. Luego baja a través de bosques de melojos, *Q. pyrenaica y abedules, hasta Alberga ria y el Ponte de S. Miguel sobre el río Homem. Una carretera lateral sube hasta un a mina abandonada de wolframio, denominada Carris, cerca de la cumbre de la sierra, Altar de Cabroes. Aunque no puede hacerse todo el camino en coche, res ulta un agradable paseo que lleva a un estrecho valle llameante de colores, principalmente de *Erica arborea, *E. australis, *E. umbellata, *Chamaespartium tridentatum y *Halimium alyssoides . *Polygala microphylla, la más espléndida del género, es abundante en esta su localidad más septentrional; también puede verse Thymelaea broteriana†, atractivo arbustito endémico de Portugal con numerosas y diminutas flores amarillas que contrastan con sus hojas coriáceas y de un verde brillante. También hay *Fritillaria lusitanica, *Tulipa australis. *Endymion hispanicus†, *Narcissus bulbocodium y la margarita blanca *Phalacrocarpum anomalum†.

A más altos niveles crece Erythronium dens-canis†, en el límite occidental de su área europea, floreciendo desde marzo hasta abril, junto con *Crocus carpetanus. La planta más interesante de toda la región es *Iris boissieri†, endemismo de estas montañas. Se puede encontrar por encima de los 600m, pero parece que es rara en altitudes menores y abundante en los alrededores de Carris, a unos 1450m. Recuerda a *lris filifolia, con idénticas hojas estrechas y muy largas, y tiene semejante hábito pu es se eleva sola por encima de los arbustos, pero las flores son algo menor es y más azules y los pétalos más laciniados.

La carretera desde Albergaria desciende por el valle del Homem atravesando bellos bosques de Quercus robur, con un subvuelo en que se mezclan Prunus lusitanica†, llex aquifolium, Acer pseudoplatanus, *Arbutus unedo y * Amelanchier ovalis. Taludes musgosos que rezuman agua están colonizados por *Saxifraga spathularis†, la hermosa *Omphalodes nitida† de bellas flores azules, y *Anemone trifolia subsp. albida†, de floración temprana. Saxifraga clusii es menos común pero ocasionalmente forma pulvínulos flojos de 2 m de diámetro que se cubren de un a nube de flores blancas. Lilium martagon† florece aquí en julio.

La vuelta a Gerês se hace subiendo a Junceda por encima de la garganta de Gerês, y bajando através del bosque de Pinus pinaster en cuyo subvuelo hay *Simethis mattiazzii y *Lithospermum diffusum. En el mismo Gerês la planta más notoria es *Erigeron karvinskianus, margarita de flores rosadas y blancas, originaria de América Central pero muy naturalizada en Europa, que está asilvestrada en las paredes. Anarrhinum bellidifolium y *Prunella grandiflora crecen junto a la carretera.

Las bulbosas del territorio, que florecen en otoño, son Crocus clusii y *Merendera montana.

Las familias más vistosas que tienen representantes en esta región son las Leguminosae, Cistaceae y Ericaceae, que incluyen numerosas especies noroccidentales:

*Cytisus multiflorus C. scoparius *C. striatus Genista micrantha *G. florida Ulex minor *Daboecia cantabrica Calluna vulgaris Erica cinerea

*Adenocarpus complicatus *Cistus psilosepalus Halimium umbellatum *H. alyssoides *Tuberaria guttata *T. globularifolia *E. ciliaris E. tetralix Vaccinium myrtillus

En octubre de 1970 se estableció el Parque Nacional de Peneda-Gerês como contribución de Portugal al Año Internacional de Conservación, y se abrió una oficina en Caldas do Gerês donde se pueden obtener un librito y un mapa del parque. La construcción de muchos kilómetros de carreteras forestales, señaladas en el mapa del parque pero no en los corrientes de carreteras, hace posible el acceso en coche a gran parte del territorio, un área de unas 68.000 hectáreas que comprende un a de las más bellas regiones de Portugal, donde los brezales se exhiben magnifica s en junio. Una de las plantas más atractivas de las áreas graníticas del no rte de Portugal, Thymus caespititius, con olor a limón, forma un tom illa r baj o y rosa a primer os de junio, que se ve aquí y allá entre las rocas graníticas.

Na Flora-on encontramos mais do que 430 espécies numa pesquisa de espécies de plantas vasculares sobre a Serra do Gerês:

Pesquisa de plantas (Flora-on) para Peneda-Gerês

Taxa correspondentes à pesquisa
Acanthaceae	Acanthus mollis
Alismataceae	Baldellia alpestris
Amaranthaceae	Chenopodium album
….	….

(Download Lista completa da pesquisa)

Veja à seguir: 2.13.5b. Serra do Gerês - Geografia, Clima, Geologia, Geomorfologia e Solos

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3.10 Construction of Fusion tables for visualization of potential migration paths of animals with aid of a Google Drive Database.

3.10 Construction of Fusion tables for visualization of potential migration paths of animals with aid of a Google Drive Database.

Horst Engels and Pedro Santos

Google Drive offers very good possibilities for construction of a (Personal) Database from documents stored in your Google Drive account. You have 15GB of free storage on one account, but if you use your 10 possible different accounts you can use up to 150GB of free storage space for your database. We are constructing at the moment a Database for collections of papers about Biodiversity on the Iberian Peninsula which can be accessed via a Google Drive Spreadsheet. The final database will also permit to build easily Google Fusion Tables in order to visualize the potential migration paths of species in the database.*

Construction of Fusion Tables for Species

Fusion tables permit visualization in Google Maps of points and lines which may form undirected or directed graphs.  For the database we wish to show the potential migration paths for species based on their actual distribution.

A simple and semi-automated procedure to produce such graphs is as follows:

1. The starting point is again the Google sheet  “Biodiversity on the Iberian Peninsula (Parte II - Northern Portugal)”.

2. In the case of the Mammals worksheet, you need the following columns for the construction of the Fusion table from the database:

Mamíferos (Mammalia)

Sítio/Nome

Longitude (DD)

Latitude (DD)

Each record must hold at least a location of occurrence for the selected species stored as geographic coordinates  (Longitude and Latitude), both in decimal degrees.

3. You select the records of the species whose potential migration paths you wish to construct by applying a filter query, for example on the species Galemys pyrenaicus.  The result of the query is saved as a Filter view  (-->;Data-->;Filter views...-->;Save as Filter view).

4. Now you move the record which contains the principal node of interest for migration (this might be Serra da Estrela for example) to the top of the list. It is important to do this only in a Filter view, otherwise the database will be permanently altered!

5. In a third step you copy this (reordered) selection into a new table which you may name something like “Galemys (Location of interest)”. If you only wish to display points of occurrence of the species you can skip step (4) of reordering the records and will go ahead to step (10).

6. In this table you create a column which you may call “KML (LineString)” and which will hold LineString-KMLs (edges) for the graph which you want to map in the Fusion table. 
   
   

7. Now you paste a formula into the first cell (F2) of the new column which produces the KML for a lines between the 1. (Serra da Estrela) and ith. node from the geographic coordinates of the node coordinates in column C and D. In this case the formula which will be pasted into cell F2 looks like this:

(C$2and  D$2 hold the geographic coordinates (in decimal degrees) of the Serra da Estrela node - C$2 and D$2 are absolute (not relative) positions in the spreadsheet.)

8. Copying this formula into the other cells of column F (in the example cells F3 to F17), the KMLs for the restant lines, formed by the node pairs (Serra da Estrela - Location of the ith record), are generated.

Now the table should look like this:

9. In the last step the Fusion table is created from this base table. This is a straightforward process as the column which holds the KMLs for the LineStrings, is automatically recognized as the location field in the Fusion table. The final result is shown here:

Potential migration paths for Galemys pyrenaicus into or from Serra da Estrela

into or from protected sites in North Portugal

(Link to the Fusion table - Galemys (Serra da Estrela))

10. In case that you wish to display only locations of occurrence of the species in a map you can use the table from step (4) and import the table into a Fusion table where you set the two columns with latitude - longitude coordinates as the locations. The following map can be displayed now of occurrence of Galemys pyrenaicus in protected sites in Northern Portugal:

*It must be stressed out here that the simple graphs shown in this post can give only a rudimentary idea of the potential migration paths  - as spatial conditions as topography, ambient conditions and species specific requirements are not taken into consideration in the straight line graph (- fish unlikely fly on a straight line from one location to another). But also, at the moment the necessary data for estimation of acceptable migration paths (with or without more sophisticated methods and programs as the program “Maxent”) are not existent or unavailable (at least not public or free). Furthermore, even much more elaborate methods as “Maximum entropy” estimation are always bound to use positive information about presence of species. Therefore, absence of species which might be true absence or only lack of confirmation, cannot be taken adequately into consideration.  If information of presence of species is not available due to a largely unknown distribution of the species, as is the case for many or most of the smaller and less “attractive” species (on the Iberian Peninsula and worldwide), no good estimation of potential migration paths can be made whatsoever. Other reasons may be lack of attention to endangered species which are not categorized as in danger because of a lack of data actualization (as for example due to climate changes).

Therefore the principal purpose of the database is besides collection of papers to show whether a species exists in protected locations and whether migration and/or reintroduction from nearby and hopefully genetically similar and well adapted populations is possible when the species becomes locally endangered or extinct. The second objective is to show (and fill in future) still existing big gaps of information, especially for the less known categories and species rich systematic groups as Invertebrates, lichens and bryophytes. The graph method with aid of Fusion tables is at the moment a by-product which can be however very useful for visualization of relations between locations or species.