Species composition of ground herb covers in olive groves and adjacent semi-natural habitats in the south of Iberian Peninsula

[Methodology] We selected 40 paired olive groves from 20 localities, covering a cultivated area circa 35 km2 and encompassing a distance of 310 km between the most distant ones, hence widely distributed across the Guadalquivir Valley (Andalucía, Spain). Localities were selected to cover a wide gradient in landscape complexity, from landscapes dominated by olive groves to landscapes including a large fraction of natural (forests, scrublands, streams and pastures with native plants) or semi-natural habitats (gullies, vegetated edges and field margins) or other woody and annual crops. At each locality, the pair of olive groves differed in the herb cover management (20 low-intensity and 20 intensive groves) in 2016 while some of them changed their management in 2019, while sharing the same landscape context. Farm size and climatic and edaphic condition varied between localities but were relatively similar between the pair of farms within locality. Low-intensity management involved the maintenance of the ground herb cover most of the year through agroecological practices, such as grazing (mainly with sheep), mowing or stand maintaining between olive trees. Some of these low-intensity managed olive farms where also organic when, in addition, there was no use of pesticides nor synthesis fertilizers. In contrast, intensive management persistently reduced herb cover by herbicides and/or recurrent tillage. The landscape of each locality was classified in simple (characterized by vast extensions of olive groves with very few natural habitat patches), intermediate (olive groves are intermingled with annual crops and with greater extension of natural habitats) or complex (olive groves are scarcer and the area covered by forests, shrublands, streams and grasslands with native plants is larger). The community of herb species was monthly sampled in each olive groves from April to June in 2016 and 2019, using 1-m2 quadrats. We surveyed 4-6 herbs quadrats per grove (in olive field habitats), depending on the orchard size (4 sampling points in small groves [<10 ha]; 6 sampling points in large groves [>10 ha]) and 2-4 herbs quadrats per olive grove in semi-natural habitats adjacent to olive field. Substantial work was done in the lab for the classification of the many species that we were not able to determine at species level in the field. BBDD_Herbs_sps_habitat_farm.csv '