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Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014
Habitat restoration projects are often conducted when prior use or extraction of natural resources results in land degradation. The success of restoration programmes, however, is variable, and studies that provide evidence of long term outcomes are valuable for evaluation purposes. This study focuse...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5691784/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29158963 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3942 |
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author | Smith, Barbara Maria Diaz, Anita Winder, Linton |
author_facet | Smith, Barbara Maria Diaz, Anita Winder, Linton |
author_sort | Smith, Barbara Maria |
collection | PubMed |
description | Habitat restoration projects are often conducted when prior use or extraction of natural resources results in land degradation. The success of restoration programmes, however, is variable, and studies that provide evidence of long term outcomes are valuable for evaluation purposes. This study focused on the restoration of vegetation within a limestone quarry in Dorset, UK between 1997 and 2014. Using a randomised block design, the effect of seed mix and seed rate on the development of community assemblage was investigated in comparison to a nearby target calcareous grassland site. We hypothesised that seed mix composition and sowing rate would influence both the trajectory of the grassland assemblage and final community composition. We found that species composition (in relation to both richness and community assemblage) was strongly influenced by time and to some extent by seed rate and seed mix. However, no treatments achieved strong resemblance to the calcareous grassland target vegetation; rather they resembled mesotrophic communities. We conclude that (as with previous studies) there is no “quick fix” for the establishment of a grassland community; long-term monitoring provides useful information on the trajectory of community development; sowing gets you something (in our case mesotrophic grassland), but, it may not be the target vegetation (e.g., calcicolous grassland) you want that is difficult to establish and regenerate; it is important to sow a diverse mix as subsequent recruitment opportunities are probably limited; post-establishment management should be explored further and carefully considered as part of a restoration project. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5691784 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56917842017-11-20 Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 Smith, Barbara Maria Diaz, Anita Winder, Linton PeerJ Conservation Biology Habitat restoration projects are often conducted when prior use or extraction of natural resources results in land degradation. The success of restoration programmes, however, is variable, and studies that provide evidence of long term outcomes are valuable for evaluation purposes. This study focused on the restoration of vegetation within a limestone quarry in Dorset, UK between 1997 and 2014. Using a randomised block design, the effect of seed mix and seed rate on the development of community assemblage was investigated in comparison to a nearby target calcareous grassland site. We hypothesised that seed mix composition and sowing rate would influence both the trajectory of the grassland assemblage and final community composition. We found that species composition (in relation to both richness and community assemblage) was strongly influenced by time and to some extent by seed rate and seed mix. However, no treatments achieved strong resemblance to the calcareous grassland target vegetation; rather they resembled mesotrophic communities. We conclude that (as with previous studies) there is no “quick fix” for the establishment of a grassland community; long-term monitoring provides useful information on the trajectory of community development; sowing gets you something (in our case mesotrophic grassland), but, it may not be the target vegetation (e.g., calcicolous grassland) you want that is difficult to establish and regenerate; it is important to sow a diverse mix as subsequent recruitment opportunities are probably limited; post-establishment management should be explored further and carefully considered as part of a restoration project. PeerJ Inc. 2017-11-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5691784/ /pubmed/29158963 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3942 Text en ©2017 Smith et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Conservation Biology Smith, Barbara Maria Diaz, Anita Winder, Linton Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title | Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title_full | Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title_fullStr | Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title_full_unstemmed | Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title_short | Grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of Swanworth Quarry, UK, 1997–2014 |
title_sort | grassland habitat restoration: lessons learnt from long term monitoring of swanworth quarry, uk, 1997–2014 |
topic | Conservation Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5691784/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29158963 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3942 |
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