Just hatched!
1 October 2022. This is a new website about landscape, vegetation, flora, ecology and human society and their mutual relationships. It is expected to grow continuously. Due to limited capacities (see below) I’m by now trying to figure out what works best with me. New entries will be published, and contents and structure of existing entries will change. So have a look every now and then!
Who and Why
This website is provided by me (Rolf Diran) in collaboration with the charitable scientific “Verein für Landschafts- und Vegetationsforschung” (VLVF, Association for Landscape and Vegetation Research), of which I am the chairman. I am a landscape planer and vegetation scientist living in Vienna, Austria (see “About Us“).
In my working years I have collected huge amounts of scientific data and detailed new information concerning many vegetation types and plant species. Even more importantly, I have arrived at fundamental theoretical and methodical insights in these and other topics. Almost all of this is unpublished. In addition I have concerned myself with many interdisciplinary topics regarding ecology, human society, politics etc., on which I hope to write about later.
Unfortunately, starting in the late nineties, I became increasingly ill with a condition finally diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). It left me severely restricted in my working capacity.
Because of this and the fact that scientific work is basically that kind of activity that still goes best with me, I want to restart publishing my knowledge using this website. This is of great importance to me, because it provides a medium for publishing adapted to my respective condition.
Besides, my condition has its peculiarities. One of them is that I have two activity capacities almost entirely independent from each other: one for the inside and one for the outside. The latter includes going for walks as well as performing not too strenous work like mapping of plant species and collecting vegetation relevés. Since I am doing this on a small scale but almost every day, I am sitting on an ever growing mountain of unpublished data I have difficulties to process and publish…