Citation: Ortiz, J.F.P.; Tierra, Á.E.S.; Sánchez-Mata, D. Application of Phytosociological Information in the Evaluation of the Management of Protected Areas. Plants 2023, 12, 406. https://doi.org/10.3390/ plants12020406 Academic Editor: Panayiotis Dimitrakopoulos Received: 29 November 2022 Revised: 4 January 2023 Accepted: 12 January 2023 Published: 15 January 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). plants Article Application of Phytosociological Information in the Evaluation of the Management of Protected Areas Jaime F. Pereña Ortiz 1, * , Ángel Enrique Salvo Tierra 1 and Daniel Sánchez-Mata 2 1 Department of Botany and Plant Physiology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Malaga, Campus de Teatinos, Bulevar Louis Pasteur s/n, 29010 Malaga, Spain 2 Harvard University Herbaria, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2094, USA * Correspondence: jportiz100@hotmail.com; Tel.: +34-610-889-839 Abstract: The classification system of plant communities using phytosociological methods can be applied to their conservation in protected areas, as well as in establishing adequate protections and granting legal status to such areas. A new integrative index is developed to classify plant communities for the evaluation of the conservation status of protected areas, obtained from the product of three statistical indices of diversity: Syntaxonomic Distinctness, Rarefaction and Areas Prioritisation, which has been named DRA (acronym of the three indices used). The DRA is used to assess whether the status granted to Protected Areas matches the values provided by the plant communities within them and which were the basis for the identification and description of the Habitats of Community Interest (Habitats Directive—92/43/CEE). The proposed method was applied to the network of protected natural areas on the Andalusian coast, including 14 areas with different protection status, where, once the plant communities they contain were identified, the DRA index was applied to each of them and compared with the Legal Protection Index, i.e., the current protection regime; it becomes clear, objectively, that not all the statuses assigned, whether the IUCN criteria or those of the Andalusian government, correspond to the real levels of protection they should have on the basis of their plant communities. Keywords: plant communities; syntaxonomic distinctness; rarefaction; conservation priority; legal protection; protected area 1. Introduction The analysis of landscape from the phytosociological point of view is a valuable tool for its comprehensive study, including its dynamism and heritage value. The common methodologies used in phytosociology are considered as an optimal choice in environ- mental management assessments of habitats, as has been recognized for decades [1–8]. It is based on floristic inventories of homogeneous areas and the evaluation of the taxa present according to their abundance and dominance. This method has proven very useful in obtaining knowledge on vegetation and its dynamics over increasingly large territo- ries [9,10]. Despite the implicit subjectivity of such information, the enormous amount that has accumulated over the past century is currently viewed as an extraordinary database susceptible to statistical and multivariate analysis, using the inventory as a working unit. Researches have shown that these observations can be treated with a high degree of confi- dence [5,11,12]. The use of taxa and plant communities as indicators in land-use planning and their application in natural environment conservation policies is accepted in several countries, insofar as they are in themselves the object of such protection [13,14]. Some studies have applied the information contained in the study of vegetation (habitats) and their cartographic representation to territorial biological assessment criteria for natural areas [15–17]. Loidi (2008) [18] estimated the environmental or naturalistic value of natural Plants 2023, 12, 406. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12020406 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants