Identifying functional groups for response to disturbance in an abandoned pasture

Lavorel, Sandra; Touzard, Blaise; Lebreton, Jean‐Dominique; Clément, Bernard

doi:10.1016/s1146-609x(98)80027-1

Cited by 114 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…sylvestris) by species with well-adapted traits, e.g., postrate or rosette twigs (Plantago sp.) or buried buds (Poa bulbosa; Noy-Meir et al, 1989;Lavorel et al, 1998). Other studies have also reported that moderate levels of disturbance maximize species diversity (Grime, 1979;Connell, 1978;Crawley, 1983;Milchunas et al, 1988;Huston, 1994) to the point that a reestablishment of diversity has been attributed to bison grazing in grasslands anthropogenically stressed by frequent fires (Collins et al, 1998).…”

Section: Change In Plant Diversity With Grazingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change in plant spatial patterns and diversity along the successional gradient of Mediterranean grazing ecosystems

Alados¹,

El-Aich

Papanastasis³

et al. 2004

Ecological Modelling

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In this study, we analyze the complexity of plant spatial patterns and diversity along a successional gradient resulting from grazing disturbance in four characteristic ecosystems of the Mediterranean region. Grazing disturbance include not only defoliation by animals, but also associated disturbances as animal trampling, soil compaction, and mineralization by deposition of urine and feces. The results show that woodland and dense matorral are more resistant to species loss than middle dense and scattered matorral, or grassland. Information fractal dimension declined as we moved from a dense to a discontinuous matorral, increasing as we moved to a more scattered matorral and a grassland. In all studied cases, the characteristic species of the natural vegetation declined in frequency and organization with grazing disturbance. Heliophyllous species and others with postrate or rosette twigs increased with grazing pressure, particularly in dense matorral. In the more degraded ecosystem, only species with well-adapted traits, e.g., buried buds or unpalatable qualities showed a clear increase with grazing. Indeed, the homogeneity of species distribution within the plant community declined monotonically with grazing impact. Conversely, the spatial organization of the characteristic plants of each community increased in the better-preserved areas, being also related to the sensitivity of the species to grazing impact. The degree of autocorrelation of plant spatial distribution at the species level and the information fractal dimension at the community level allow us to quantify the degree of degradation of natural communities and to determine the sensitivity of key species to disturbance.

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Section: Change In Plant Diversity With Grazingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change in plant spatial patterns and diversity along the successional gradient of Mediterranean grazing ecosystems

Alados¹,

El-Aich

Papanastasis³

et al. 2004

Ecological Modelling

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“…triviale were gap colonizers in subalpine grasslands, but not Agrostis capillaris, which however played an important role in our case. This stoloniferous species was defined by ARNTHORSDOTTIR (1994) and PAKEMAN et al (1998) as a good colonizer andLAVOREL et al (1998) described it as a representative species of pig disturbance. Cerastium fontanum subsp.…”

Section: Species Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of cattle activities on gap colonization in mountain pastures

et al. 2006

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Cattle influences gap dynamics in pastures in two ways: (1) by creating gaps and (2) by affecting the colonization process. This effect of cattle activity on gap revegetation can be subdivided in three main factors: herbage removal, trampling and dung and urine deposition. The objective of this study was to assess how these three effects moderate the plant succession following gap creation.In an exclosure, four controlled treatments simulating cattle activity (repeated mowing, trampling, manuring and untreated control) were applied on plots of 2´2 m. In the centre of each plot, one artificial gap of 606 0 cm was created. During three years, vegetation changes were monitored in spring and in autumn, with a square grid of 100 cells of 0.01 m 2 centred on the gap. Our experiment confirmed that fine-scale gap creation may have a high impact on relative abundances of species in the community. The gap environment acts on species as a filter and this filtering was described in terms of regenerative attributes. Colonizers were species with small seeds, unspecialized seed dispersal, persistent seed bank and high vegetation spread. However, the role of dung deposition, herbage removal or trampling by cattle did not seem to be of primary importance in the revegetation process, but could moderate vegetation response. Therefore, the different cattle effects act as secondary filters that selectively favoured or disadvantaged different species from the gap-regenerating community. These complex interactions are probably keys to understand plant coexistence in perennial grasslands.

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“…Significant efforts have been put into grouping species by functional characteristics in order to predict grassland (e.g. Lavorel et al, 1998) and forest ecosystems (e.g. Verheyen et al, 2003) responses to global changes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving plant functional groups for dynamic models of biodiversity: at the crossroads between functional and community ecology

Boulangeat

Philippe

Abdulhak

et al. 2012

Global Change Biology

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The pace of on-going climate change calls for reliable plant biodiversity scenarios. Traditional dynamic vegetation models use plant functional types that are summarized to such an extent that they become meaningless for biodiversity scenarios. Hybrid dynamic vegetation models of intermediate complexity (hybrid-DVMs) have recently been developed to address this issue. These models, at the crossroads between phenomenological and process-based models, are able to involve an intermediate number of well-chosen plant functional groups (PFGs). The challenge is to build meaningful PFGs that are representative of plant biodiversity, and consistent with the parameters and processes of hybrid-DVMs. Here, we propose and test a framework based on few selected traits to define a limited number of PFGs, which are both representative of the diversity (functional and taxonomic) of the flora in the Ecrins National Park, and adapted to hybrid-DVMs. This new classification scheme, together with recent advances in vegetation modeling, constitutes a step forward for mechanistic biodiversity modeling.

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Identifying functional groups for response to disturbance in an abandoned pasture

Cited by 114 publications

References 22 publications

Change in plant spatial patterns and diversity along the successional gradient of Mediterranean grazing ecosystems

Change in plant spatial patterns and diversity along the successional gradient of Mediterranean grazing ecosystems

Effect of cattle activities on gap colonization in mountain pastures

Improving plant functional groups for dynamic models of biodiversity: at the crossroads between functional and community ecology

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