The Upper Mississippi River floodscape: spatial patterns of flood inundation and associated plant community distributions

Abstract

Questions: How is the distribution of different plant communities associated with patterns of flood inundation across a large floodplain landscape? Location: Thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy hectare of floodplain, spanning 320 km of the Upper Mississippi River (UMR). Methods: High-resolution elevation data (Lidar) and 30 yr of daily river stage data were integrated to produce a 'floodscape' map of growing season flood inundation duration. The distributions of 16 different remotely sensed plant communities were quantified along the gradient of flood duration. Results: Models fitted to the cumulative frequency of occurrence of different vegetation types as a function of flood duration showed that most types exist along a continuum of flood-related occurrence. The diversity of community types was greatest at high elevations (0-10 d of flooding), where both upland and lowland community types were found, as well as at very low elevations (70-180 d of flooding), where a variety of lowland herbaceous communities were found. Intermediate elevations (20-60 d of flooding) tended to be dominated by floodplain forest and had the lowest diversity of community types.Conclusions: Although variation in flood inundation is often considered to be the main driver of spatial patterns in floodplain plant communities, few studies have quantified flood-vegetation relationships at broad scales. Our results can be used to identify targets for restoration of historical hydrological regimes or better anticipate hydro-ecological effects of climate change at broad scales.

Distribution patterns of plant communities and their associations with environmental soil factors on the eastern shore of Lake Taihu, China

“…We found that the main factors affecting vegetation distribution were SOM, Cond, pH, TP, and A-P. SOM provides nutrients to plants, ensures plant production and development, and plays an important role in the sustainable development of the wetland. Cond contains rich information about physical properties and soil quality, which is crucial for plant growth (Jager et al 2015). Soil pH was an important determinant of the productivity of a site and in the separation of plant groups (Dong et al 2014).…”

“…A contribution to our understanding of how a community is put together, how it works, what determines the relative proportions of community members, and their spatial and temporal relationships with each other might contain something of value for describing wetlands. The vegetation in wetlands has been described by a number of authors who distinguished a variable number of wetland plant communities (Casanova and Brock 2000;Dekeyser, Kirby, and Ell 2003;O'Connell et al 2012;Williams and Ahn 2015); these works suggested various aspects of soil conditions to be the main environmental factors affecting wetland plant communities, namely soil water content and soil nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon (Gilliam 2006;Li et al 2010;Zheng, Chen, and Wu 2013;Jager et al 2015;Wang et al 2016). Wetland vegetation can effectively absorb nutrients from the surrounding soil.…”

Quantifying and mapping inundation regimes within a large river‐floodplain ecosystem for ecological and management applications

“…In addition, we qualitatively noted that the spatial arrangement of inundation attributes varied strongly among pools, which could have important implications for the nature of broader‐scale vegetation processes such as dispersal, recruitment, and mortality (Levey, Tewksbury, & Bolker, 2008; Nathan & Muller‐Landau, 2000). For example, emergent marsh communities tend to be associated with longer‐duration flooding (De Jager et al, 2016) and are prevalent in the UIR and LIR where we observed more frequent and prolonged inundation (De Jager et al, 2018); fewer inundation events observed in the ORR may limit the extent of emergent marshes in lower portions of the UMRS. Recent efforts to model floodplain forest succession in the UMRS have supported the notion that broad‐scale variability in inundation dynamics can have important consequences for the distribution and abundance of tree species (De Jager et al, 2019).…”

Floral diversity of abandoned mansions and the influence of soil properties on these unique vegetations.

“…Soil pH has a prominent role in determining physical properties and fertility of soil, which have direct effect on plant growth 90 . Soil pH determines the productivity of soil and separation of the plant clusters growth 91 .…”