Long‐term recovery of above‐ and below‐ground interactions in restored grasslands after topsoil removal and seed addition

Abstract

1. Evaluation of restoration activities is indispensable to assess the extent to which targets have been reached. Usually, the main goal of ecological restoration is to restore biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but validation is often based on a single indicator, which may or may not cope with whole-ecosystem dynamics.Network analyses are, however, powerful tools, allowing to examine both the recovery of various biotic and abiotic properties and the integrated response at community and ecosystem level.2. We used restoration sites where topsoil was removed from former intensively managed grassland and seeds were added. These sites were between 3 and 32 years old. We assessed how plants, soil biota, soil properties and correlationbased interactions between biotic communities and their abiotic environment developed over time and compared the results with (i) intensively managed (not restored), and (ii) well-preserved targeted semi-natural grasslands.3. Plant, nematode, fungal and prokaryotic diversity and community structures of the restored grasslands revealed clear successional patterns and followed similar trajectories towards targeted semi-natural grasslands. All biotic communities reached targeted diversity levels no later than 18 years post-restoration.4. Ecological networks of intensively managed and short-term (~4 years) restored grasslands were less tightly connected compared to those found in mid-and long-term (~18-30 years) restored and target grasslands. Restoration specifically enhanced interactions among biotic communities, but reduced interactions between biotic communities and their abiotic environment as well as interactions among abiotic properties in the short-and mid-term. Synthesis and applications:Overall, our study demonstrated that topsoil removal and seed addition were successful in restoring diverse, tightly coupled and wellconnected biotic communities above-and below-ground similar to those found

Transient shifts in composition of degraded temperate native grassland following grazing exclusion

“…The interaction of seed addition with different disturbance regimes also requires investigation. Seed addition has huge potential for accelerating positive changes between grassland states (Zamin et al, 2018; Resch et al, 2022), but high‐diversity seed mixtures can be expensive (Török et al, 2011). Future grassland research should also be cognisant of the multiple goals of grassland management, which include conserving plant diversity, providing suitable and sustainable habitat for grassland fauna, resisting weed invasion, withstanding climate extremes and, in some cases, supporting livestock enterprises.…”

“…Seed addition has huge potential for accelerating positive changes between grassland states (Zamin et al, 2018;Resch et al, 2022), but high-diversity seed mixtures can be expensive (Török et al, 2011).…”

Energy-Sensitive Trajectory Design and Restoration Areas Allocation for UAV-Enabled Grassland Restoration

“…where l i ∈ [0.3, 0.8] is the degree of grassland degradation in the i-th restored area and γ is a positive parameter with grassland environment. The weight of seeds addition in the different grassland degradation areas depends on the number of seeds species, seed mass, seed quality, seed mixed method, and grassland types [39,40,41].…”