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A new methodological framework for plant diversity assessment at the landscape scale is presented that exhibits the following strengths: (1) potential for easily standardizable sampling procedure; (2) characterization of disturbance regime; (3) use of selected disturbance descriptors as explanatory variables which probably allow for better transferability than site specific land use types--for example, to evaluate the emerging use of energy plants that pose novel management challenges without historic precedence to many landscapes; (4) analysis of quantitative and qualitative aspects of plant species diversity (alpha and beta diversity). For data analysis, a powerful regression method (PLS-R) was applied. On this basis, after further validation and transferability tests, a practical tool for the development and validation of effective agri-environmental programmes may be developed.
