Plant Community Diversity at Two Reclaimed Mine Tailing Storage Facilities in Québec, Canada

Mining activities generate residues during the ore concentration process. These wastes are placed into large tailing storage facilities, and upon mine closure, these tailings must be reclaimed. This study aimed to determine how different reclamation methods, involving combinations of planted boreal woody species and organic amendments application (paper mill sludge biosolids, chicken manure, and topsoil) affected plant community diversity at two tailing storage facilities in Québec, Canada. We recorded the composition of the plant communities using the percent cover of plant species within 1 m × 1 m quadrats. At the Niobec mine site, paper mill sludge mixed with topsoil enhanced total plant cover was compared with the use of topsoil only; the former amendment, however, reduced evenness (J′) and diversity (1−D) due to the increased growth of grasses and invasive forbs. At the Mont-Wright site, plots having received paper mill sludge mixed with a “Norco” treatment (a mixture of chicken manure, hay, and grass seeds) produced the highest total plant cover. The Norco treatment mixed with topsoil and the single application of topsoil and biosolids produced the highest evenness (J′) and diversity (1−D). Overall, organic amendment applications promoted vegetation cover on tailings and contributed to the colonization of diverse plant communities.

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Mountain pastures of Qilian Shan: plant communities, grazing impact and degradation status (Gansu province, NW China)

Hacquetia ◽

10.1515/hacq-2016-0014 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 21-35 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Alina Baranova ◽

Udo Schickhoff ◽

Shunli Wang ◽

Ming Jin

Keyword(s):

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Detrended Correspondence Analysis ◽

Gansu Province ◽

Grazing Impact ◽

Vegetation Patterns ◽

Pasture Management ◽

Nw China

Abstract Environmental degradation of pasture areas in the Qilian Mountains (Gansu province, NW China) has increased in recent years. Soil erosion and loss of biodiversity caused by overgrazing is widespread. Changes in plant cover, however, have not been analysed so far. The aim of this paper is to identify plant communities and to detect grazing-induced changes in vegetation patterns. Quantitative and qualitative relevé data were collected for community classification and to analyse gradual changes in vegetation patterns along altitudinal and grazing gradients. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) was used to analyse variation in relationships between vegetation, environmental factors and differential grazing pressure. The results of the DCA showed apparent variation in plant communities along the grazing gradient. Two factors - altitude and exposure - had the strongest impact on plant community distribution. Comparing monitoring data for the most recent nine years, a trend of pasture deterioration, plant community successions and shift in dominant species becomes obvious. In order to increase grassland quality, sustainable pasture management strategies should be implemented.

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Combining botanical collections and ecological data to better describe plant community diversity

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0244982 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. e0244982

Author(s):

Christina Alba ◽

Richard Levy ◽

Rebecca Hufft

Keyword(s):

Plant Community ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Biodiversity Loss ◽

Ecological Condition ◽

Community Diversity ◽

Species Pool ◽

Ecological Data ◽

Natural Systems ◽

Biogeographic Patterns ◽

Urban Greenway

In this age of rapid biodiversity loss, we must continue to refine our approaches to describing variation in life on Earth. Combining knowledge and research tools from multiple disciplines is one way to better describe complex natural systems. Understanding plant community diversity requires documenting both pattern and process. We must first know which species exist, and where (i.e., taxonomic and biogeographic patterns), before we can determine why they exist there (i.e., ecological and evolutionary processes). Floristic botanists often use collections-based approaches to elucidate biodiversity patterns, while plant ecologists use hypothesis-driven statistical approaches to describe underlying processes. Because of these different disciplinary histories and research goals, floristic botanists and plant ecologists often remain siloed in their work. Here, using a case study from an urban greenway in Colorado, USA, we illustrate that the collections-based, opportunistic sampling of floristic botanists is highly complementary to the transect- or plot-based sampling of plant ecologists. We found that floristic sampling captured a community species pool four times larger than that captured using ecological transects, with rarefaction and non-parametric species estimation indicating that it would be prohibitive to capture the “true” community species pool if constrained to sampling within transects. We further illustrate that the discrepancy in species pool size between approaches led to a different interpretation of the greenway’s ecological condition in some cases (e.g., transects missed uncommon cultivated species escaping from nearby gardens) but not others (e.g., plant species distributions among functional groups were similar between species pools). Finally, we show that while using transects to estimate plant relative abundances necessarily trades off with a fuller assessment of the species pool, it is an indispensable indicator of ecosystem health, as evidenced by three non-native grasses contributing to 50% of plant cover along the highly modified urban greenway. We suggest that actively fostering collaborations between floristic botanists and ecologists can create new insights into the maintenance of species diversity at the community scale.

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Dominant drivers of plant community assembly vary by soil type and time in reclaimed forests

Plant Ecology ◽

10.1007/s11258-020-01096-z ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kaitlyn E. Trepanier ◽

Bradley D. Pinno ◽

Ruth C. Errington

Keyword(s):

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Seed Bank ◽

Community Assembly ◽

Native Species ◽

Vegetative Reproduction ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Soil Types ◽

Short Period ◽

Plant Community Assembly

AbstractInformation on plant community assembly mechanisms is limited on forest reclamation sites after mining in the Canadian boreal forest. We assessed the change in plant community composition after Year 2 and Year 5 on species-rich forest floor mineral mix (FFMM) and species-poor peat mineral mix (PMM) reclamation soils by examining assembly mechanisms, i.e., seed bank, seed rain, biotic dispersal, vegetative expansion, and competition. Initial plant cover and diversity were greater on FFMM due to non-native species originating from the seed bank, which had 5× more seeds in the FFMM. By Year 5, both soil types had approximately 40% cover and 80 species richness due to the addition of wind and biotic-dispersed species and were characterized by a shift towards native species. Native forbs using vegetative reproduction expanded up to 2 m from FFMM into PMM. At Year 5 competition does not seem to have a large role in the structuring of the vegetation community. Overall, multiple factors were involved in structuring plant communities on reclamation sites, but we observed a general convergence between plant communities on different soil types in a relatively short period of time.

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Nursery crop response to substrates amended with raw paper mill sludge, composted paper mill sludge and composted municipal waste

Canadian Journal of Plant Science ◽

10.4141/p04-031 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 84 (4) ◽

pp. 1127-1134 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Calvin Chong ◽

Peter Purvis

Keyword(s):

Dry Weight ◽

Paper Mill ◽

Chicken Manure ◽

Soluble Salts ◽

Paper Mill Sludge ◽

Yard Waste ◽

Municipal Compost ◽

Cornus Alba ◽

Group A ◽

Weigela Florida

Silverleaf dogwood (Cornus alba L. ‘Argenteo-marginata’), forsythia (Forsythia × intermedia Zab. ‘Lynwood Gold’), and weigela (Weigela florida Bunge A.DC. ‘Red Prince’) were grown in #2 (6-L) containers filled with 100% bark or bark mixed with 20, 40 or 60% by volume each of raw paper mill sludge (RB group), Bio Soil compost containing 100% paper mill sludge (BCB group), Waterdown compost containing 40% paper sludge, 40% chicken manure and 20% sawdust (WCB group), and municipal compost consisting of leaf and yard waste (MCB group). A fifth substrate group (MCH) consisted of 100% hemp chips or hemp chips mixed with the same rates of municipal compost. The containers were trickle-irrigated and fertilized with a controlled-release fertilizer. Regression analysis indicated that growth among the barkamended groups was highest for dogwood and forsythia with WCB, increasing dramatically and peaking at about the 40% rate (68 and 94 g plant-1 aboveground dry weight, respectively). Growth of these species was intermediate with MCB and BCB and least with RB, increasing to rates ≥ 50% in these groups. There was no significant response of dogwood to RB. Growth of weigela increased equally with WCB and MCB substrates up to about 40% (117 g plant-1), but was not influenced by varying rates of RB and BCB. With the hemp-amended MCH group, growth of all three species increased to rates ≥ 50% (62, 93, and 116 g plant-1 for dogwood, forsythia and weigela, respectively). Growth of the three species over most rates of all substrate groups was similar to, or exceeded that in 80% bark: 15% peat: 5% topsoil, a proven nursery mix. Aboveground dry weight of all three species was positively correlated with soluble salts concentrations in the substrates sampled at planting and on other sampling dates during the season. Key words: Nursery, ornamentals, waste and compost utilization

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Relationship between Diversity and Stability of a Karst Plant Community

10.22541/au.164203826.66321902/v1 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Yang Wang ◽

Jin Chen ◽

Limin Zhang ◽

Ling Feng ◽

Lingbin Yan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Species Diversity ◽

Plant Community ◽

Functional Diversity ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Functional Redundancy ◽

Community Diversity ◽

Ecosystem Ecology ◽

Community Recovery ◽

The Relationship ◽

Late Stages

The relationships among species diversity, functional diversity, functional redundancy, and community stability are central to community and ecosystem ecology. This paper examines plant communities at different stages of vegetation restoration in the Guizhou karst plateau to study the relationship among functional diversity, functional redundancy, and stability of plant communities. The most important results include the following. (1) Species diversity (SD), functional redundancy (FR), and stability (STB) gradually increased with restoration, and there were significant differences among the different stages; functional diversity (FD) increased at first and then decreased, and reached the highest level at the tree irrigation stage. (2) Plant height (PLH) and specific leaf area (SLA) were functional traits that affected the diversity and stability of the plant community, and PLH was positively correlated with plant community diversity and stability, while SLA was negatively correlated with plant community diversity and stability. (3) During the community recovery, FD and FR interacted to maintain stability. In the early and late stages of recovery, the effect of functional redundancy on stability was greater than that of functional diversity, but it was the opposite in the middle stages. (4) The tree irrigation stage is the likely point at which the species diversity of plant communities in karst areas reached saturation, and the growth rate of functional redundancy after species diversity saturation was greater than that before saturation.

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Plant community recovery from intense deer grazing depends on reduction of graminoids and the time after exclosure installation in a semi-natural grassland

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.7833 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. e7833 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Chiaki Otsu ◽

Hayato Iijima ◽

Takuo Nagaike

Keyword(s):

Species Composition ◽

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Sika Deer ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Dissimilarity Index ◽

Large Herbivores ◽

Community Recovery ◽

One Year ◽

Deer Grazing

Exclosures that exclude large herbivores are effective tools for the protection and restoration of grazed plant communities. However, previous studies have shown that the installation of an exclosure does not ensure plant community recovery. Our study aimed to determine the effects of the domination of unpalatable plants and the timing of exclosure installation on the plant community recovery process in montane grassland overgrazed by sika deer (Cervus nippon) in Japan. In this study we compared plant species composition and their cover with inside and outside exclosures installed at different times. Furthermore, we also compared them with those in 1981, when density of sika deer was very low. We used quadrats inside and outside fenced areas established in 2010 and 2011 to record both the cover and the height of species in each quadrat between 2011 and 2015. Plant cover, with the exception of graminoid species, increased in later years in all treatments. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plots showed significantly differentiated treatment trends. The species composition within the 2010 fenced area gradually shifted to greater similarity with the species composition reported in 1981. The plant community in the 2011 fenced area was slower to recover. Compositions of plant communities outside the fenced areas hardly changed from 2011 to 2015. Chao’s dissimilarity index decreased over time between the plant community surveyed between 2011 and 2015 and the past plant community in 1981 within the exclosures, and was higher in the 2011 fenced area than in the 2010 fenced area. In conclusion, we show that the reduction of graminoids and the time after exclosure installation were important for plant community recovery from deer grazing damage. A delay in exclosure installation of one year could result in a delay in plant community recovery of more than one year.

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Arbuscular mycorrhizal association and dependency determined the pioneer plant community, diversity structure and plant cover in two river bank under same climate

Brazilian Journal of Biological Sciences ◽

10.21472/bjbs.061313 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (13) ◽

pp. 453-465

Author(s):

Somdatta Ghosh ◽

D. Kuila ◽

N. K. Verma

Keyword(s):

Species Composition ◽

Plant Species ◽

Plant Community ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Similarity Index ◽

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal ◽

Community Diversity ◽

River Bank ◽

Pioneer Plant ◽

Mycorrhizal Association

Early colonization of plants in an area is influenced mostly by climatic, edaphic and phytogeographic factors. As arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) was associated with early invasion of land plants on earth, AM may have some role in defining the first seral community in any land. Two riverbanks were selected to study their pioneer plant community structure with species composition and diversity, soil characters and arbuscular mycorrhizal association; and correlations among these factors. Species composition, diversity and richness indices, active AM association of early colonizing plant species, soil texture, moisture, pH and E.C in two river banks differed. Similarity index for plant species between the two communities was poor. Diversity and richness indices were high in K site while evenness was high in R site. AM colonization and spore density correlated highly with plant cover and frequency in both riverbanks. Soil moisture showed a strong negative impact on mycorrhization, soil organic carbon showed little. Soil pH showed varied correlation in different sites. Early colonizing plants in R site with silt-loam soil with high moisture level are found poorly mycotrophic or nonmycotrophic; though plant cover correlated highly with mycotrophy in both sites. Plants in sandy soil of K site are highly mycotrophic and with high arbuscular and vesicular colonizations. The distribution of frequency in R site is highly deviated from Raunkiuer’s frequency class; in K site it is rather stable. The soil condition is only key factor to determine plant composition and plant-mycorrhizal relations influencing colonization of early seral community.

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Understorey plant community assemblage of Australian Eucalyptus woodlands under elevated CO2 is modulated by water and phosphorus availability

Journal of Plant Ecology ◽

10.1093/jpe/rtab005 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Raúl Ochoa-Hueso ◽

Rani Carroll ◽

Juan Piñeiro ◽

Sally A Power

Keyword(s):

Plant Community ◽

Elevated Co2 ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Water Availability ◽

Plant Cover ◽

Functional Adaptation ◽

Phosphorus Addition ◽

Eastern Australia ◽

Understorey Plant

Abstract Aims Given the key functional role of understorey plant communities and the substantial extent of forest cover at the global scale, investigating understorey community responses to elevated CO2 (eCO2) concentrations, and the role of soil resources in these responses, is important for understanding the ecosystem-level consequences of rising CO2 concentrations for forest ecosystems. Here, we evaluated how experimentally manipulated the availabilities of the two most limiting resources in an extremely phosphorus-limited eucalypt woodland in eastern Australia woodland (i.e. water and phosphorus) can modulate the response of the understorey community to eCO2 in terms of germination, phenology, cover, community composition, and leaf traits. Methods We collected soil containing native soil seed bank to grow experimental understorey plant communities under glasshouse conditions. Important findings Phosphorus addition increased total plant cover, particularly during the first four weeks of growth and under high-water conditions, a response driven by the graminoid component of the plant community. However, the treatment differences diminished as the experiment progressed, with all treatments converging at ~80% plant cover after ~11 weeks. In contrast, plant cover was not affected by eCO2. Multivariate analyses reflected temporal changes in the composition of plant communities, from pots where bare soil was dominant to high-cover pots dominated by a diverse community. However, both phosphorus addition and the interaction between water availability and CO2 affected the temporal trajectory of the plant community during the experiment. Elevated CO2 also increased community-level specific leaf area, suggesting that functional adaptation of plant communities to eCO2 may precede the onset of compositional responses. Given that the response of our seedbank-derived understorey community to eCO2 developed over time and was mediated by interactions with phosphorus and water availability. Our results suggest that a limited role of eCO2 in shaping plant communities in water-limited systems, particularly where low soil nutrient availability constrains productivity responses.

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Temporal dynamics of mycorrhizal fungal communities and co-associations with grassland plant communities following experimental manipulation of rainfall

10.32942/osf.io/t82ug ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Coline Deveautour ◽

Sally Power ◽

Kirk Barnett ◽

Raul Ochoa-Hueso ◽

Suzanne Donn ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Composition ◽

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Fungal Community ◽

Mycorrhizal Fungi ◽

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal ◽

Fungal Communities ◽

Plant Responses ◽

Rainfall Regimes

Climate models project overall a reduction in rainfall amounts and shifts in the timing of rainfall events in mid-latitudes and sub-tropical dry regions, which threatens the productivity and diversity of grasslands. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may help plants to cope with expected changes but may also be impacted by changing rainfall, either via the direct effects of low soil moisture on survival and function or indirectly via changes in the plant community. In an Australian mesic grassland (former pasture) system, we characterised plant and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities every six months for nearly four years to two altered rainfall regimes: i) ambient, ii) rainfall reduced by 50% relative to ambient over the entire year and iii) total summer rainfall exclusion. Using Illumina sequencing, we assessed the response of AM fungal communities sampled from contrasting rainfall treatments and evaluated whether variation in AM fungal communities was associated with variation in plant community richness and composition. We found that rainfall reduction influenced the fungal communities, with the nature of the response depending on the type of manipulation, but that consistent results were only observed after more than two years of rainfall manipulation. We observed significant co-associations between plant and AM fungal communities on multiple dates. Predictive co-correspondence analyses indicated more support for the hypothesis that fungal community composition influenced plant community composition than vice versa. However, we found no evidence that altered rainfall regimes were leading to distinct co-associations between plants and AM fungi. Overall, our results provide evidence that grassland plant communities are intricately tied to variation in AM fungal communities. However, in this system, plant responses to climate change may not be directly related to impacts of altered rainfall regimes on AM fungal communities. Our study shows that AM fungal communities respond to changes in rainfall but that this effect was not immediate. The AM fungal community may influence the composition of the plant community. However, our results suggest that plant responses to altered rainfall regimes at our site may not be resulting via changes in the AM fungal communities.

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Classification of woody-shrub vegetation of the forest-steppe complex of Privolzhskaya Upland

Vegetation of Russia ◽

10.31111/vegrus/2009.15.27 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 27-53

Author(s):

A. Yu. Kudryavtsev

Keyword(s):

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Dominant Species ◽

Large Scale ◽

Nature Reserve ◽

Vegetation Mapping ◽

Vegetation Classification ◽

Forest Steppe ◽

Mapping Data

Diversity of plant communities in the nature reserve “Privolzhskaya Forest-Steppe”, Ostrovtsovsky area, is analyzed on the basis of the large-scale vegetation mapping data from 2000. The plant community classification based on the Russian ecologic-phytocoenotic approach is carried out. 12 plant formations and 21 associations are distinguished according to dominant species and a combination of ecologic-phytocoenotic groups of species. A list of vegetation classification units as well as the characteristics of theshrub and woody communities are given in this paper.

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