User:MargaretRDonald/sandbox/Ladislav Mucina

Ladislav Mucina (born May 28, 1956 in Piešťany, Slovakia ) is a Slovakian born botanist.

Mucina works on the following topics: vegetation studies ( vegetation surveys, mapping, database systems), population and evolutionary biology, plant systematics and biogeography, vegetation surveys in Slovakia, Austria and Europe. He examined vegetation patterns and population ecology of central European dry grasslands.

He contributed to the European Nature Information System (EUNIS) of the European Union, to studies of the ecology and conservation of native forests, to vegetation mapping in Western Australia, to vegetation dynamics and to functional and evolutionary community ecology with a focus on rehabilitation processes in species-rich bushland and general areas.

Life & education
Mucina grew up in Slovakia and went to school there. In 1979 he studied geobotany and vegetation ecology at the Comenius University in Bratislava. From 1979 to 1983 he continued these studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

He continued his education at the Technical University of Berlin, where from 1989 to 1990 he studied botany. After graduation, he went to the Radboud University Nijmegen.

Mucina has taught at universities in Austria, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Kuwait, South Africa (Pretoria, QwaQwa, Stellenbosch) and Australia. From 2009 to 2013 he was a professor at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. His field of work was biodiversity.

In 2014 he was lluka Chair of Plant Science and Biogeography at the University of Western Australia, Perth. In 2014 he was appointed associate professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. In 2017 Mucina was a full professor at the University of Western Australia in Perth and in 2018 a professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.

For the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS) Mucina worked as a member in management and advisory bodies and in working groups. He was also a co-founder of the "Journal Applied Vegetation Science" and editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Vegetation Science". In South Africa he established the national plant database and worked on the mapping of the local plant occurrences.

In the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), Mucina has the standard form "Mucina" and is listed as the author of 105 plant names.

Vegetation of Europe
From 2001, Mucina headed a project in which, together with 32 other authors from different countries, he developed a complete representation of Europe's vegetation, which was published in 2016. A new classification system for vegetation in Europe emerged from this work. It is a hierarchical floristic classification system of vascular plants, mosses, lichens and algae communities that processes the earlier classifications. In addition, an extensive bibliography, a terminological dictionary and lists of species were created.

In addition, an expert system was created that assigns plant sociological images to higher units: orders and classes. The EuroVegBrowser software was developed for this expert system. The result of this work is freely available as a PDF file.

Awards

 * In 1990 Mucina was granted citizenship of the Republic of Austria for special services.
 * In 2016 he received the Holuby Medal of the Botanical Society of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
 * In 2016 he became an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and in 2018 an honorary member of the International Association of Vegetation Science (IAVS).

Selected publications

 * Vegetation Survey and Classification of Subtropical Forests of Southern Africa (Geobotany Studies), Springer, 2018, ISBN 3-319-67830-2, ISBN 978-3-319-67830-6
 * Ladislav Mucina, Georg Grabherr, Thomas Ellmauer, Susanne Wallnöfer: The Austrian Plant Society : Part I: Anthropogenic Vegetation. Part II: Natural forest-free vegetation, Part III: Forests and bushes, Gustav Fischer, 1993, ISBN 3-334-60452-7.
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