Comparative Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecological Indicators in Three Forest Ecosystems of Southern Romania

This paper aims to analyze and compare the structure of tree and herbaceous plant communities in three temperate forest ecosystems located in the south of Olt County, Romania. The research consisted of determining the tree and herbaceous composition of the ecosystems by the frame quadrats sampling method and the taxonomic determination of the species. The community structure was analyzed based on structural indices such as the arithmetic mean of individuals (X), standard deviation (SD), confidence limits (LC), percentage density (DP), frequency (F), constant (C), relative significance index (W) and dominance index (ID). The results indicated that the structure of the plant communities shows differences depending on the studied area, but this structure remains complex but uneven. In the case of trees, species such as Crataegus monogyna, Quercus robur or Acer campestre tend to influence the community more due to an uneven distribution or a significant number of individuals. As regards the herbaceous species, out of the 34 identified, only two were noted to be present in all three sites, namely Geum urbanum and Viola canina, which reflects a higher adaptability in their case.