Valuation methods in vegetation and its use in land management

The main methods for valuating vegetation proposed by different authors over the last three decades are summarized and discussed in this paper. As a result of this fact a new index for calculating the global conservation interest of the vegetation in a place or site is also proposed in this study. The index, based on the Cadinanos & Meaza's proposals, includes new criteria and synphytosociological concepts and can be a very useful tool to be applied in land management and nature conservation studies.