The main goal of quarry restoration is to convert degraded, unproductive areas into new, self‐sustaining ecosystems that develop into highly natural environments. With the aim to individuate the best practices for restoring limestone quarries, we investigated the short‐term effects on vegetation features and economic advantages of three restoration approaches. These approaches included tree and shrub planting, no herb layer, or a commercial seed mixture or hayseed. The different approaches were tested in a limestone quarry within the Botticino extractive basin (N‐Italy). A donor grassland area of hayseed and a quarry area that had undergone spontaneous revegetation over a decade were used as control areas. We surveyed the vegetation plots to investigate the structure and the productivity of the herbaceous layers; collecting data on plant species cover, the mean plant height, the tree and shrubs mortality and biomass enabled us to perform gradient analysis. The main differences between the sites were due to biotic factors; specifically, vegetation cover was affected quite differently by the different restoration approaches. Restoration with commercial seed mixture resulted primarily in dense stands of Lolium perenne that caused an increase in shrub and tree mortality. Cost–benefit analysis showed that despite hayseed being the most expensive approach in terms of cost and time, it ensured higher species diversity, vegetation structure and greening. Our results highlighted that autochthonous plant materials can improve excavation‐areas restoration by both contrasting the colonisation of non‐native species and increasing natural regeneration and biodiversity levels. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The invasion of Ambrosia artemisiifolia across European countries has been favoured by its ecological amplitude and by its ability to colonise and dominate disturbed/ruderal areas that have lost competition from native species. We supposed that a strong competition for habitat resources may inhibit A. artemisiifolia growth, generating a negative feedback to its establishment. Based on this hypothesis, in this study, we undertook a 1-year field experiment to assess the effect of mixtures of grassland species on A. artemisiifolia growth and fitness in bare soils. We applied three different treatments within an abandoned quarry area invaded by A. artemisiifolia: (i) spontaneous succession, (ii) hayseed and (iii) a commercial seed mixture. Within plots, we recorded vegetation parameters, A. artemisiifolia abundance and traits. Results obtained after one growing season showed that the commercial seed resulted in the strongest reduction of A. artemisiifolia growth rate in terms of plant height, lateral spread and leaf size. This was ascribed to higher density of plants that play a key role in reducing biomass and fitness of A. artemisiifolia. However, hayseed should be preferred, as it preserves local biodiversity. Seeding mixtures of grassland species can successfully suppress A. artemisiifolia in the first year of establishment on a vegetation-free soil derived from quarry activities. This study indicated that inducing dominance of different native species in a newly developing plant community should enhance competition for resources, reducing the success of early coloniser non-native species.

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Revegetation patterns after quarry abandonment have been widely studied from several ecological points of view, but a trait-based approach is still lacking. The aim of this study was to characterise the plant species assemblages and the associated functional traits filtered on different geomorphological surfaces in abandoned limestone quarry areas: artificial cliffs, embankments, and platforms. We then verified if species with certain traits were better able to overcome the dispersal and environmental filters necessary for establishment. To this aim, we analyzed 113 vegetation plots and collected data on 25 morphological, ecological, and dispersal traits to detect species adaptaions across these man-made environments. As a case study, we investigated the extraction basin of Botticino (Lombardy, Italy), the second largest in Italy. The results obtained by SIMPER and CCA analyses showed that rockiness, stoniness, slope, elevation, and time of surfaces are the main filters that varied across quarries and affected plant assemblages at the macro-scale level. Across the three geomorphological surfaces (meso-scale) of quarries, more specific abiotic filters selecting species were found. In turn, traits differentiation according to the three main geomorphological surfaces of quarry emphasized that further filters acting at the micro-scale imply differences in dispersal mechanisms and resource availability. This work highlighted the utility to study species assemblages and environmental filters to address quarry restoration according to the type of geomorphological surface. The investigation of some traits (chorological form, life forms, seed dispersal,s and plant height) can furnish some interesting indications for practice individuating further abiotic filters acting at the micro-scale.