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"Plant biodiversity"
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Responses of the plant community characteristics and diversity of abandoned grasslands in the Loess Hilly Region in China to slope aspect and year of abandonment
As key temporal and topographical factors, the year of abandonment and slope aspect significantly affect the restoration process and plant community assembly of abandoned grasslands by altering their microenvironmental conditions. However, how their interactive effects specifically influence the spatiotemporal variations in quantitative characteristics, functional groups, and species or functional diversity of grassland communities remains unclear.
In the present study, abandoned grasslands in the Loess Hilly Region, China, were taken as the research objects. The response patterns of the quantitative characteristics of the grassland community, species belonging to different functional groups, and the species or functional diversity of the grassland community to years of abandonment, slope aspect and their interactions were investigated.
Slope aspect and year of abandonment had significant interactive effects on the quantitative community characteristics, species of each functional group, and species/functional diversity of grasslands. In particular, the dynamic patterns of the above indicators with increasing years of abandonment revealed significant slope aspect heterogeneity. With increasing years of abandonment, all the quantitative characteristics of the shady slope communities tended to continuously decease, or first increase but then decrease, and the species number, biomass, density of each functional group, and community-level species and functional diversity presented similar changes. In contrast, the corresponding indicators of sunny slope communities were dominated by no significant change or an overall increasing trend.
In general, the overall traits of the abandoned grassland communities on shady slopes tended to improve rapidly, followed by a decline during the succession process, whereas those on sunny slopes tended to be stable or showed overall positive development. To manage the ecological restoration process of abandoned grasslands, different strategies need to be formulated on the basis of slope aspect heterogeneity.
Journal Article
Post-Fire Recovery of Plant Biodiversity Changes Depending on Time Intervals since Last Fire in Semiarid Shrublands
Fire is a key disturbance affecting plant biodiversity patterns and evolution. Although a wide range of studies have shown important impacts of fire on vegetation, most have focused on taxonomic diversity, with less emphasis on other aspects of biodiversity, such as functional and phylogenetic diversity. Therefore, we assessed the recovery of biodiversity facets across different times since the last fire in semiarid shrublands in Northeast Iran. We quantified changes in plant biodiversity facets, including taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity, and the diversity of seven functional traits in five ecologically comparable sites that have experienced wildfire disturbances at short-term (1 and 4 year sites) and long-term (10 and 20 year sites) intervals, in com- parison to an unburnt site. Our results showed significant changes in all biodiversity facets related to the year since the last fire, with a significant increase in biodiversity and diversity of functional traits under long-term rather than short-term conditions, and in comparison to the unburned site. We conclude that wildfire influences the presence of plant species with distant functional and evolutionary relatedness and causes an increase in plant species and diversity of functional traits de- pending on time intervals. Therefore, wildfire can promote positive effects on the recovery of bio- diversity aspects and the evolution of vegetation in semiarid shrublands.
Journal Article
Global meta-analysis reveals no net change in local-scale plant biodiversity over time
Global biodiversity is in decline. This is of concern for aesthetic and ethical reasons, but possibly also for practical reasons, as suggested by experimental studies, mostly with plants, showing that biodiversity reductions in small study plots can lead to compromised ecosystem function. However, inferring that ecosystem functions will decline due to biodiversity loss in the real world rests on the untested assumption that such loss is actually occurring at these small scales in nature. Using a global database of 168 published studies and >16,000 nonexperimental, local-scale vegetation plots, we show that mean temporal change in species diversity over periods of 5–261 y is not different from zero, with increases at least as likely as declines over time. Sites influenced primarily by plant species’ invasions showed a tendency for declines in species richness, whereas sites undergoing postdisturbance succession showed increases in richness over time. Other distinctions among studies had little influence on temporal richness trends. Although maximizing diversity is likely important for maintaining ecosystem function in intensely managed systems such as restored grasslands or tree plantations, the clear lack of any general tendency for plant biodiversity to decline at small scales in nature directly contradicts the key assumption linking experimental results to ecosystem function as a motivation for biodiversity conservation in nature. How often real world changes in the diversity and composition of plant communities at the local scale cause ecosystem function to deteriorate, or actually to improve, remains unknown and is in critical need of further study.
Journal Article
Community biodiversity management : promoting resilience and the conservation of plant genetic resources
\"The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the environments where this diversity originated or is being used, are issues which are high on the policy agenda. This book is the first to set out a clear overview of community biodiversity management (CBM) as an approach to meet social, economic and environmental change\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Interannual variation in land-use intensity enhances grassland multidiversity
Although temporal heterogeneity is a well-accepted driver of biodiversity, effects of interannual variation in land-use intensity (LUI) have not been addressed yet. Additionally, responses to land use can differ greatly among different organisms; therefore, overall effects of land-use on total local biodiversity are hardly known. To test for effects of LUI (quantified as the combined intensity of fertilization, grazing, and mowing) and interannual variation in LUI (SD in LUI across time), we introduce a unique measure of whole-ecosystem biodiversity, multidiversity. This synthesizes individual diversity measures across up to 49 taxonomic groups of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria from 150 grasslands. Multidiversity declined with increasing LUI among grasslands, particularly for rarer species and aboveground organisms, whereas common species and belowground groups were less sensitive. However, a high level of interannual variation in LUI increased overall multidiversity at low LUI and was even more beneficial for rarer species because it slowed the rate at which the multidiversity of rare species declined with increasing LUI. In more intensively managed grasslands, the diversity of rarer species was, on average, 18% of the maximum diversity across all grasslands when LUI was static over time but increased to 31% of the maximum when LUI changed maximally over time. In addition to decreasing overall LUI, we suggest varying LUI across years as a complementary strategy to promote biodiversity conservation.
Journal Article
Biodiversity in the city: key challenges for urban green space management
Cities play important roles in the conservation of global biodiversity, particularly through the planning and management of urban green spaces (UGS). However, UGS management is subject to a complex assortment of interacting social, cultural, and economic factors, including governance, economics, social networks, multiple stakeholders, individual preferences, and social constraints. To help deliver more effective conservation outcomes in cities, we identify major challenges to managing biodiversity in UGS and important topics warranting further investigation. Biodiversity within UGS must be managed at multiple scales while accounting for various socioeconomic and cultural influences. Although the environmental consequences of management activities to enhance urban biodiversity are now beginning to be addressed, additional research and practical management strategies must be developed to balance human needs and perceptions while maintaining ecological processes.
Journal Article
Plant diversity effects on soil microorganisms support the singular hypothesis
The global decline in biodiversity has generated concern over the consequences for ecosystem functioning and services. Although ecosystem functions driven by soil microorganisms such as plant productivity, decomposition, and nutrient cycling are of particular importance, interrelationships between plant diversity and soil microorganisms are poorly understood. We analyzed the response of soil microorganisms to variations in plant species richness (1–60) and plant functional group richness (1–4) in an experimental grassland system over a period of six years. Major abiotic and biotic factors were considered for exploring the mechanisms responsible for diversity effects. Further, microbial growth characteristics were assessed following the addition of macronutrients. Effects of plant diversity on soil microorganisms were most pronounced in the most diverse plant communities though differences only became established after a time lag of four years. Differences in microbial growth characteristics indicate successional changes from a disturbed (zymogeneous) to an established (autochthonous) microbial community four years after establishment of the experiment. Supporting the singular hypothesis for plant diversity, the results suggest that plant species are unique, each contributing to the functioning of the belowground system. The results reinforce the need for long-term biodiversity experiments to fully appreciate consequences of current biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning.
Journal Article