Beyond the species pool: modification of species dispersal, establishment, and assembly by habitat restoration

Török, Péter; Helm, Aveliina; Kiehl, Kathrin; Buisson, Élise; Valkó, Orsolya

doi:10.1111/rec.12825

Cited by 56 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…In many cases, introduction of seeds in restoration sites is crucial for guaranteeing restoration success, and to ensure the colonisation of the target grassland species. Seed sowing is especially recommended in large restoration sites in human-modified landscapes and in areas subjected to long-lasting or severe degradation, where the restoration potential of seed bank is limited (Török et al 2018). Dry grasslands in general have a low-density seed bank, characterised by transient seeds, and containing just a few persistent seeds of only a few typical grassland species (Bossuyt & Honnay 2008; Kiss et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation and seed bank dynamics highlight the importance of post-restoration management in sown grasslands

Valkó

Deák

Török

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Sowing grass seeds generally supports the rapid development of a closed perennial vegetation, which makes the method universally suitable for fast and effective landscape-scale restoration of grasslands. However, sustaining the recovered grasslands, and increasing their diversity is a challenging task. Understanding the role of seed bank compositional changes and vegetation dynamics contributes to designating management regimes that support the establishment of target species and suppress weeds. Our aim was to reveal the effect of post-restoration management on the vegetation and seed bank dynamics in grasslands restored in one of the largest European landscape-scale restoration projects. Eight years after restoration we sampled the vegetation and seed bank in a total of 96 plots located in 12 recovered grasslands in the Great Hungarian Plain. In each recovered grassland stand we designated a mown (mown from Year 1 to Year 8) and an abandoned sample site (mown from Year 1 to Year 3 then abandoned from Year 4 to Year 8). Mown and abandoned sites showed divergent vegetation and seed bank development. Abandonment led to the decline of sown grasses and higher cover of weeds, especially in the alkaline grasslands. Our study confirmed that seed bank has a limited contribution to the maintenance of biodiversity in both grassland types. We found that five years of abandonment had a larger effect on the seed bank than on the vegetation. We stress that long-term management is crucial for controlling the emergence of the weeds from their dense seed bank in restored grasslands.Implications for practiceSeed sowing of grass mixtures can be a feasible tool for restoring grasslands at large scales. However, the developed vegetation usually has low biodiversity and a high seed density of weeds is typical in the soil seed bank even several years after the restoration. Therefore, post-restoration management is necessary for suppressing weeds both aboveground and belowground.We recommend to design the long-term management of the sites subjected to grassland restoration already in the planning phase of the restoration projects and ensure that the management plan is ecologically and economically feasible.We recommend to complement the monitoring of vegetation with the analysis of soil seed bank for evaluating restoration success.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation and seed bank dynamics highlight the importance of post-restoration management in sown grasslands

Valkó

Deák

Török

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Many researches have shown that habitat restoration is strongly limited by early dispersal, which results from the depletion of the soil seed bank and dispersal limitation of target species in fragmented landscapes (e.g. Bakker et al ; Kiehl et al ; Török et al ). In general, the soil seed bank of degraded sites (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trait‐based approach confirms the importance of propagule limitation and assembly rules in old‐field restoration

Halassy

Botta‐Dukát

Csecserits

et al. 2019

Restoration Ecology

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Community assembly theory is suggested as a guiding principle for ecological restoration to help understand the mechanisms that structure biological communities and identify where restoration interventions are needed. We studied three hypotheses related to propagule limitation, stress-dominance, and limiting similarity concepts in community assembly in a restoration field experiment with a trait-based null model approach. The experiment aimed to assist the recovery of sand grassland on former arable land in the Kiskunság, Pannonian biogeographic region, Europe. Treatments included initial seeding of five grassland species, carbon amendment, low-intensity mowing, and combinations in 1 m by 1 m plots in three old fields from 2003 to 2008. The distribution of 10 individual plant traits was compared to the null model and the effect of time and treatments were tested with linear mixed effect models. Initial seeding had the most visible impact on species and trait composition confirming propagule limitation in grassland recovery. Reducing nutrient availability through carbon amendment strengthened trait convergence for length of flowering as expected based on the stress-dominance hypothesis. Mowing changed trait divergence to convergence for plant height with a strengthening impact with time, supporting our hypothesis of increasing dominance of limiting similarity with time. Our results support the idea that community assembly is simultaneously influenced by propagule limitation and multiple trait-based processes that act through different traits. The limited impact of manipulating environmental filtering and limiting similarity compared to seeding, however, supports the view that only targeting the dispersal and environmental filters in parallel would improve restoration outcome.

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“…That depends on assessing their capacity to resist and/or to recover their properties after disturbances (Hodgson et al ). This knowledge informs restoration and conservation planning in two ways: (1) it improves the prediction about how ecosystems will respond after a natural or induced disturbance and (2) it clarifies which vegetation attributes should be restored in degraded systems (Suding ; Török et al ). After land conversion for pasture or forestry, studies have demonstrated that the woody component of cerrado dry grasslands can quickly resprout from specialized underground structures, but the herbaceous component does not recover (Durigan et al ; Abreu & Durigan ; Cava et al ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native remnants can be sources of plants and topsoil to restore dry and wet cerrado grasslands

Pilon

Assis

Souza

et al. 2018

Restoration Ecology

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Neotropical grasslands have undergone intensive degradation by land conversion or biological invasion, but their restoration is still challenging. Here, we integrated two approaches to (1) assess the resilience of pristine dry and wet cerrado grasslands after removal of plants and topsoil and (2) evaluate the effectiveness of different treatments based on the material extracted from pristine grasslands to restore degraded dry and wet grasslands after pine invasion. We used old-growth cerrado grasslands in southeastern Brazil as donor ecosystems and assessed their resilience after the removal of all plants and the upper 5-cm soil layer. To restore both wet and dry grasslands, we tested topsoil translocation, plant transplantation, direct seeding, topsoil translocation + direct seeding, and needle layer removal. Both wet and dry grasslands were resilient to plants and topsoil removal, as evidenced by their fast recovery. The major mechanisms promoting resilience were seed germination in the wet grasslands and resprouting from underground organs in the dry grasslands. Transplantation was the most successful treatment to restore vegetation cover, species richness, and composition in both wet and dry grasslands, especially for herbaceous species. Restoration of the herbaceous layer of cerrado grasslands can be successful using natural ecosystems as donor sites without impairing their resilience in the studied scale. Improving the resilience of degraded dry and wet cerrado grasslands depends on reestablishing the condition to seed germination in the wet grasslands and reintroducing species with the ability to resprout after disturbance in the dry grasslands, attributes that explained the quick recovery of the donor ecosystems. Implications for Practice• Donor ecosystems can quickly recover from uprooting plants and removing topsoil at a small scale in both dry and wet grasslands. • As topsoil translocation and transplantation of mature grasses and forbs proved to be viable techniques to restore dry and wet cerrado grasslands, once restored these grasslands can be turned into sources of material for grassland restoration elsewhere. • Transplantation during the rainy season is a promising way to quickly recover the ground layer of degraded dry and wet grasslands with low potential for natural regeneration in the Cerrado. • Reestablishing the ground cover, plant species richness, and species composition is much faster and easier in wet than in dry degraded grasslands. • Removal of the pine needle layer is mandatory before the application of restoration techniques in either dry or wet grasslands.

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Beyond the species pool: modification of species dispersal, establishment, and assembly by habitat restoration

Cited by 56 publications

References 70 publications

Vegetation and seed bank dynamics highlight the importance of post-restoration management in sown grasslands

Vegetation and seed bank dynamics highlight the importance of post-restoration management in sown grasslands

Trait‐based approach confirms the importance of propagule limitation and assembly rules in old‐field restoration

Native remnants can be sources of plants and topsoil to restore dry and wet cerrado grasslands

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