A NEW SPIRIT, AGAIN: SANDRO PIGNATTI, THE EUROPEAN VEGETATION SURVEY AND THE FUTURE OF VEGETATION SCIENCE

This Special Issue of Annali di Botanica originates from the meeting held in Rome in October 2025 to celebrate the scientific and human legacy of Sandro Pignatti and reflects on the continuing relevance of his contribution to vegetation science. Pignatti played a central role in the development of the European Vegetation Survey, which transformed a fragmented set of national traditions into an increasingly integrated European framework based on shared standards, databases, classification systems and continental-scale syntheses. Yet he also warned that the accumulation of data does not necessarily translate into greater ecological understanding. This concern is especially relevant today, when vegetation science is being reshaped by large databases, remote sensing, automated classification and artificial intelligence. The contributions gathered in this Special Issue illustrate the breadth of Pignatti’s intellectual legacy, spanning syntaxonomy, biogeography, palaeoecology, urban ecology, digital tools, artificial intelligence and environmental ethics. Together, they suggest that the future of vegetation science depends on maintaining a productive dialogue between field observation and computation, taxonomy and modelling, local expertise and continental synthesis, and scientific knowledge and environmental responsibility. Revisiting Pignatti’s call for “a new spirit in phytosociology”, we argue that vegetation science should remain both technologically innovative and firmly rooted in the direct knowledge of plants, communities and landscapes, while contributing critically to conservation, restoration and the stewardship of a rapidly changing biosphere.