Landscape Is the Main Driver of Weed Assemblages in Field Margins but Is Outperformed by Crop Competition in Field Cores

Berquer, Adrien; Martin, Olivier; Gaba, Sabrina

doi:10.3390/plants10102131

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Local management seems to play a major role in the conservation of arable plant communities in the study area. Consistently, previous evidence showed that management factors like crop height, tillage depth, preceding crop, or the overall intensity of management are of primary importance in determining species richness, composition, or both (Fried et al 2008;Pál et al 2013;Berquer et al 2021). The restrained effects of landscape features allow us to confirm that agricultural practices, rather than the surrounding landscape, should be the focus for the conservation of arable plant diversity, as previously highlighted on a local scale (Armengot et al 2011).…”

Section: Implications For Arable Plant Diversity Conservation and Res...supporting

confidence: 87%

“…However, landscape effects were mainly observed in field margins, while the role of management prevails in field cores (Kovács-Hostyánszki et al 2011). In fact, landscape can be a source of species in field edges, but the features of plant communities in field cores are mainly determined by crop competition and management (Gonthier et al 2014;Berquer et al 2021).…”

Section: Drivers Of α-Diversity Species Composition and β-Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Drivers of diversity of arable plant communities in one of their european conservation hotspots

et al. 2023

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The changes of agriculture led to deep transformations of arable plant diversity. The features of arable plant communities are determined by many anthropic, environmental, and geographic drivers. Understanding the relative importance of such drivers is essential for conservation and restoration purposes. In this work, we assessed the effects of agronomic, climatic, geographic, and landscape features on α-diversity, β-diversity, and composition of winter arable plant communities across continental Italy, a European hotspot of arable plant diversity. Using redundancy analysis and variation partitioning, we observe that the selected groups of variables explained a restrained to moderate proportion of the variation in diversity and composition, depending on the response (5.5–23.5%). We confirm previous evidence that climate and geographic location stand out in determining the features of arable plant communities in the country, followed by the type of rural area. The surrounding landscape has a subordinate influence but affects both α and β-diversity. The α-diversity is higher in traditional agricultural areas and in landscapes rich in woody vegetation, while it is lower in warmer areas. Species composition is determined by climate, latitude, and the type of rural area, but not by landscape. Total β-diversity is mainly explained by climate and latitude, and subordinately by the agricultural context and landscape. Its components are explained by latitude and climate (replacement) and agricultural context and climate (richness difference). The local contribution to β-diversity of single sites suggested a good conservation status of the studied communities. We discuss the implications of our findings in the light of conservation and restoration of vanishing arable plant communities.

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Section: Implications For Arable Plant Diversity Conservation and Res...supporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Drivers Of α-Diversity Species Composition and β-Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of diversity of arable plant communities in one of their european conservation hotspots

et al. 2023

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“…For instance, Guerrero et al (2014) found that weed species richness in Spain decreased linearly with field-level intensification, but remained constant at the landscape level. However, Berquer et al (2021), focusing at a resolution under 1 km, found the opposite pattern, with field margin communities showing a greater influence of landscape than agricultural practices. Concepción et al (2012) revealed that extensive farming has a weaker positive impact on weed diversity at the field center and inner field edge when the landscape is less diversified within a 500 m radius.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…For example, weed species’ richness within winter wheat crops in Spain was found to decrease linearly with field-level intensification, while remaining constant at the landscape-level (Guerrero et al, 2014). However, field margin communities may be subjected to a greater influence of landscape than agricultural practices (as found by Berquer et al (2021) at a scale lower than 1 km), in contrast to what happens within agricultural fields. Concepción et al (2012) revealed that extensive farming has a weaker positive impact on weed diversity in field center and inner field edge when the landscape is too simple within a 500 m radius.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural drivers of field margin plant communities are scale dependent

Poinas

Fried

Henckel³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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In recent decades, agricultural intensification has led to a strong decline in biodiversity. Agricultural field margins, defined as the uncultivated herbaceous vegetation located between the cultivated strip and an adjacent habitat, usually constitute an important refuge for biodiversity in highly disturbed landscapes, and are critical to the preservation of ecosystem services. However, field margins are also strongly impacted by agricultural practices in their immediate vicinity. Agricultural impacts are often studied at local to landscape scales, and rarely include national or larger spatial extents, where one of the challenges is the lack of availability of standardized monitoring efforts including both biodiversity and agricultural practices. Here, we take advantage of one such monitoring effort to assess the effects of agricultural practices on field margin flora at different extents and resolutions in continental France. We used spatial simultaneous autoregressive and generalized dissimilarity models to assess the response of species richness and community composition to climatic, soil, landscape, agricultural (fertilization, herbicides) and margin management factors. Analyses were repeated at the plot-level, as well as at 25, 40, 60 and 75 km resolutions, and at regional and national extents. We found that species richness is better explained by agricultural practices at the plot-level, and by climate and crop diversity at coarse resolutions, whereas composition responds more strongly to climate at the plot-level, and to fertilization and crop diversity at coarse resolutions. There was a strong variation in the explanatory percentage among regions, but climate effects tended to be weaker within biogeographic units compared to the national level. This allows a better understanding of landscape and management effects, and reveals interactions between local and regional effects. We suggest that providing an agricultural regulatory framework at the scale of biogeographic subdivisions could help provide pertinent measures to conserve biodiversity that are better adapted to the regional context.

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“…It is important to keep in mind that increasing the competitive performance of crops against weeds by combining management practices that are unfavourable for weeds with varietal development for these practices, as espoused here, is only one aspect of ecological weed management. It will be most successful if combined with weed management strategies at the plant community and landscape level (Berquer et al, 2021; MacLaren et al, 2020; Mahaut et al, 2019) as well as other factors related to sustainability (e.g., Storkey & Neve, 2018).…”

Section: Two Approaches To Improving Weed Suppression By Cropsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weed suppression by cereals: Beyond ‘competitive ability’

Weiner

2023

Weed Research

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Much research on cereal-weed competition has been directed towards finding cultivars that have high 'competitive ability' with weeds. I argue that this objective is insufficient, because weed suppression is usually the result of interactions among genotype, environment and management rather than direct effects of genotype, and this limits the usefulness of competitive ability as a general concept. The clearest example of this is the effect of cereal crop density. Cultivars of wheat and maize that compete best with weeds are often different at high versus low crop density. This is especially relevant because effective weed suppression, a reduction of weed growth to very low levels by competition from the crop, is only possible at high crop density and spatial uniformity. The potential for improving weed suppression by crops under standard regional management practices, which are usually based on weed-free conditions, is limited, and there is likely to be a significant cost in yield. To make major improvements in weed suppression and thereby reduce greatly our dependence on chemical weed control, researchers should focus more on management strategies that benefit the crop in competition with weeds, and then on traits that improve weed suppression under the relevant management regime, rather than considering differences in management as a form of environmental variation and looking for traits promoting general competitive ability.

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Landscape Is the Main Driver of Weed Assemblages in Field Margins but Is Outperformed by Crop Competition in Field Cores

Cited by 8 publications

References 54 publications

Drivers of diversity of arable plant communities in one of their european conservation hotspots

Drivers of diversity of arable plant communities in one of their european conservation hotspots

Agricultural drivers of field margin plant communities are scale dependent

Weed suppression by cereals: Beyond ‘competitive ability’

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