TITLE:
Can the Stepping Stone Enhance the Establishment, Competition and Distribution of Sown Grassland Species during Recovery on Ex-Arable Lands?
AUTHORS:
Jimmy Edgar Alvarez-Diaz, María del Carmen Santa-Regina, Ignacio Santa-Regina
KEYWORDS:
Colonizer Species, Ecosystem Functioning, Invasiveness, Noxious Weeds, Restoration, Sowing Experiment, Species Richness, Stepping Stone
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Ecology,
Vol.6 No.10,
September
16,
2016
ABSTRACT: Most diversity restoration projects are not to
improve diversity per se, but rather to enhance the presence and
abundance of species that are characteristic of reference or target community.
The use of Bromus inermis suppresses
annual noxious grasses and increases the control of other-forb group these species are
also noxious weeds; these may be substituted with another perennial species of
the same functional group all through the whole experimental period, as it
occurs with other perennial-forb Carduus
tenuifolius. A field experiment was conducted on abandoned arable
land with sown low and high diversity treatments and natural colonization
following typical farming practice for the site. Experimental plots were
installed on former agricultural land that had been cropped with (a rotation
of) monocultures until the end of 1995. The experiment was organized according
to a block design with five replicate blocks. An opposite trend was performed
among the colonizer species, because the colonizer grasses were relegated by
the high dominance of sown grasses. But at the same time, the sown grasses
facilitated the dominance of other colonizer-forbs species; therefore its
functional replacement in the community due to sown effect was again tested.
However, in natural conditions the other-forbs group was the dominant group,
without taking into account the stepping-stone treatment and there was also a
functional change of dominance. Our study has
demonstrated the restoration effectiveness of
species richness at abandoned arable land and may be enhanced by sowing late
successional species.