Dataset Information

Decoupled recovery of ecological communities after reclamation.

ABSTRACT: Grassland restoration is largely focused on creating plant communities that match reference conditions. However, these communities reflect only a subset of the biodiversity of grassland systems. We conducted a multi-trophic study to assess ecosystem recovery following energy development for oil and gas extraction in northern US Great Plains rangelands. We compared soil factors, plant species composition and cover, and nematode trophic structuring between reclaimed oil and gas well sites ("reclaims") that comprise a chronosequence of two-33 years since reclamation and adjacent, undeveloped rangeland at distances of 50 m and 150 m from reclaim edges. Soils and plant communities in reclaims did not match those on undeveloped rangeland even after 33 years. Reclaimed soils had higher salt concentrations and pH than undeveloped soils. Reclaims had lower overall plant cover, a greater proportion of exotic and ruderal plant cover and lower native plant species richness than undeveloped rangeland. However, nematode communities appear to have recovered following reclamation. Although total and omni-carnivorous nematode abundances differed between reclaimed well sites and undeveloped rangeland, community composition and structure did not. These findings suggest that current reclamation practices recover the functional composition of nematode communities, but not soil conditions or plant communities. Our results show that plant communities have failed to recover through reclamation: high soil salinity may create a persistent impediment to native plant growth and ecosystem recovery.

SUBMITTER: Sylvain ZA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6590388 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Decoupled recovery of ecological communities after reclamation.

Sylvain Zachary A ZA Branson David H DH Rand Tatyana A TA West Natalie M NM Espeland Erin K EK

PeerJ 20190621

Grassland restoration is largely focused on creating plant communities that match reference conditions. However, these communities reflect only a subset of the biodiversity of grassland systems. We conducted a multi-trophic study to assess ecosystem recovery following energy development for oil and gas extraction in northern US Great Plains rangelands. We compared soil factors, plant species composition and cover, and nematode trophic structuring between reclaimed oil and gas well sites ("reclai ...[more]

PMID: 31275739

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Project description:Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well-replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry-drained, and 5 or 10 years ago restored peatlands in southern Finland, with special interest in understanding spatial variation within studied sites, as well as the development of the numbers and the abundances of target species. Our results indicated a recovery of community composition 5-10 years after restoration, but there was significant heterogeneity in recovery. Plant communities farthest away from ditches were very similar to their pristine reference already 10 years after restoration. In contrast, communities in the ditches were as far from the target as the drained communities. The recovery appears to be characterized by a decline in the number and abundance of species typical to degraded conditions, and increase in the abundance of characteristic peatland species. However, we found no increase above the drained state in the number of characteristic peatland species. Our results suggest that there is a risk of drawing premature conclusions on the efficiency of ecological restoration with the current practice of short-term monitoring. Our results also illustrate fine-scale within-site spatial variability in the degradation and recovery of the plant communities that should be considered when evaluating the success of restoration. Overall, we find the heterogeneous outcome of restoration observed here promising. However, low recovery in the number of characteristic species demonstrates the importance of prioritizing restoration sites, and addressing the uncertainty of recovery when setting restoration targets. It appears that it is easier to eradicate unwanted species than regain characteristic species by restoration.

Project description:The competition for land resources created by the need for food security and ecological security is intensifying globally. To resolve the issue of land scarcity in agriculture following rapid urbanization, China implemented its requisition-compensation balance policy of cultivated lands in 1997, the introduction of which consumed numerous areas of land, such as river shoal and bare land, through reclamation. Moreover, these reclaimed and newly cultivated lands were mainly distributed in the northern part of China. Most previous studies of this subject have only examined the overall balance of cultivated lands in well-developed regions, and there is a lack of knowledge about the indigenous gains and losses before and after reclamation in important areas such as northeast China. Therefore, this study selected two representative county-level units in northeast China as the study area to analyze the conversion of cultivated land reserves during 1996-2015, evaluate the performance of reclaimed cultivated lands in terms of quality and productivity and calculate reclamation-induced changes in ecosystem service value. The results indicated that by 2015 only 16.02% of the original cultivated land reserves remained unconverted; nearly 60% were reclaimed as cultivated lands and over 20% were converted to other land resources. River shoal and ruderal land were the primary resources for cultivated lands compensation, and marsh, bare land and saline-alkaline land were found to be converted the most thoroughly. The gain of 23018.55 ha reclaimed cultivated lands were of relatively inferior quality and lower productivity, contributing approximately 4.32% of total grain output. However, this modest gain was at the expense of a 768.03 million yuan ecosystem services loss, with regulating services and supporting services being undermined the most. We argue that even if northeast China continues to shoulder the responsibility of compensating for a majority of cultivated land losses, it still needs to carefully process reclamation and introduce practical measures to protect indigenous ecosystems, in order to better serve the local residents and ensure prolonged food security with sustainability.

Dataset Information

Decoupled recovery of ecological communities after reclamation.

Publications

Decoupled recovery of ecological communities after reclamation.

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