Restoration of a species‐rich meadow on arable land by transferring meadow blocks

Abstract

bstract Question: Does transplantation of small blocks of turfs contribute to restoration of species-rich meadows on fallow land? What is the role of vegetative spread and seedling establishment of meadow plants in the neighbourhood of the transplanted turfs? Location: Bı´le´Karpaty Mountains, SE Czech Republic. Methods: Twenty-five meadow blocks, 0.4 mÂ0.4 m in size, were transplanted to fallow land (unfertile and dry) and species composition was monitored in the source area, in the transferred turfs and in their neighbourhood for 3 yr. Multivariate analyses were used to assess successional trends. Results: The transferred meadow blocks served as a source of diaspores for the seed-limited fallow land. Out of 80 transplanted species 17 species spread to adjacent plots within 3 yr. The frequency of plants expanding from the transferred turfs, either vegetatively or by seeds, was relatively low and from 2002 to 2004 a total of 22 species declined in the transferred turfs before expanding to the neighbourhood. Successional trends in species composition of the plots adjacent to the transferred blocks were strongly significant compared with the vegetation of the source area despite the short-term data used for the evaluation. The role of the seed bank in restoration was negligible. Conclusions: In infertile and dry environments, transplanted turfs may significantly speed up restoration, especially if natural sources of target plant seeds are not available in the neighbourhood. However, the restoration process is long-term and not all transferred plants can be expected to establish in the fallow land.

Comparison of translocation methods to conserve metallophyte communities in the Southeastern D.R. Congo

“…While resulting in the successful translocation of a high proportion SoC, the whole-turf translocation method did not exactly duplicate the reference Cu-Co communities due to disturbance during translocation and changes in vegetation cover and dominant species, particularly an increase in grasses and decrease in forbs. This was already noticed for numerous community translocation studies (Conlin and Ebersole 2001;Bruelheide 2003;Bay and Ebersole 2006;Fahselt 2007;Trueman et al 2007;Klimes et al 2010;Box et al 2011;Pywell et al 2011). …”

Restoring species‐rich meadow by means of turf transplantation: long‐term colonization of ex‐arable land

“…The experiment was established in April 2002 by Leoš Klimeš (Jongepierová ; Klimeš et al. ). In his experiment, 25 pieces of meadow turf, each 40 cm × 40 cm (0.16 m 2 ) in size and 30‐cm deep, were transferred from a species‐rich meadow to the experimental plot in April 2002.…”

“…In these plots, individual plant species cover was estimated in Jun 2002, 2003 and 2004 (Klimeš et al. ) and resampled in the same way in 2010, 2012 and 2013. The plots were thus sampled at age of 1, 2, 3, 9, 11 and 12 yrs after the transfer had been performed.…”

“…Cover of individual plant species was also estimated in ten randomly selected quadrats of the source meadow in Jun 2002, 2003 and 2004 (Klimeš et al. ). All plots were quadrats of the same size as the transferred blocks, i.e.…”

“…In this study we resampled an established experiment in which a potential positive effect on the restoration process by overcoming diaspore limitation via turf transfer was explored from 2002 to 2004 (Klimeš et al. ). The resampling (in 2010–2013) enabled us to evaluate vegetation changes over a period of 12 yrs.…”