Influence of environmental and spatial variables on regional distribution of forest plant species in a fragmented and changing landscape

Abstract

M. 2003. Influence of environmental and spatial variables on regional distribution of forest plant species in a fragmented and changing landscape. -Ecography 26: 768-776.During the past several centuries, forests in Europe and large parts of North America have been subject to extensive forest clearance. The last several decades, however, numerous new forest patches have been established onto former agricultural land. As a result, the present forest area often consists of a mixture of small forest patches of different age, area, habitat quality and connectivity embedded within a hostile agricultural landscape. In these patchy landscapes, distribution patterns of plant species may be affected by both regional and local factors, although the relative importance of both is still poorly understood. In this study, we investigated distribution patterns of 113 forest plant species in a fragmented landscape. Species abundances at the regional scale conformed to a clearly unimodal abundance distribution which we believe to be related to 1) environmental heterogeneity due to succession and 2) inequality in migration rates. Patch incidence was significantly related to life form, which in turn was correlated to seed mass and dispersal mechanism. Multiple logistic regressions showed that presence/absence of 59 species studied was significantly affected by patch connectivity, patch area and age for 35, 30 and 34 species, respectively. The results of this study indicate that distribution patterns of forest plant species are influenced by both local and regional factors. Moreover, they also demonstrate that next to spatial aspects of fragmentation, temporal patterns of landscape change may have far-reaching effects on presence/absence patterns of plant species and therefore should be incorporated in studies dealing with regional population structures of plants.H. Jacquemyn (hans.jacquemyn@agr.kuleu6en.ac.be), J. Butaye and M. Henry, Lab. for Forest, Nature and Landscape Research, Uni6. of Leu6en, Vital Decosterstraat 102, Belgium.

Trends in Tree Diversity and Stand Structure during Restoration: A Case Study in Fragmented Moist Deciduous Forest Ecosystems of Northeast India

“…Even forest patches of less than 1 ha in size could play major roles in maintenance of regional biodiversity [3]. During the past several years, large complexes of natural habitat have been converted into agricultural, industrial, or urbanized landscapes, leading to severe loss of the original habitat and an increasing fragmentation of the remnant patches [4]. High fragmentation rate stimulate habitat modifications and the loss of valuable portions of the forest ecosystem, the number of rare and shade -tolerant species increases due to fragmentation especially during recovery at the early successional stage [5].…”

Spatiotemporal structure of genetic variation of a spreading plant metapopulation on dynamic riverbanks along the Meuse River

“…Seed dispersal is a crucial component for the persistence and structure of plant metapopulations (Hanski, 2001;Higgins and Cain, 2002), because it affects the rate of population spread (Clark, 1998;Higgins and Richardson, 1999;Neubert and Caswell, 2000), recruitment patterns and colonization of empty habitat patches (Ehrlén and Eriksson, 2000;Jacquemyn et al, 2003) and species survival in patchy landscapes (Verheyen et al, 2004). Although new methods have been developed to determine levels of seed dispersal Tackenberg, 2003;Katul et al, 2005), estimating the long end of the dispersal tail remains challenging.…”

Plant species composition in relation to green cover configuration and function of urban parks in Beijing, China

“…These landscape changes dominated by anthropogenic activities are the major driving factors resulting in plant community variation. One of the major questions facing researchers and managers is what are the exact effects of these human activities on urban biodiversity through changing landscape characteristics (Saunders et al 1991;Jacqumyn et al 2003). Previous research on biodiversity specifically in city parks or forests is very limited (Cornelis and Hermy 2004).…”