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Lasting signature of planting year weather on restored grasslands.

ABSTRACT: Ecological restoration - the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed ecosystems - is a critical component of conservation efforts, but is hindered by inconsistent, unpredictable outcomes. We investigated a source of this variation that is anecdotally suggested by practitioners, but for which empirical evidence is rare: the weather conditions during the first growing season after planting. The idea of whether natural communities face long-term consequences from conditions even many years in the past, called historical contingency, is a debated idea in ecological research. Using a large dataset (83 sites) across a wide geographic distribution (three states), we find evidence that precipitation and temperatures in the planting year (2-19 years before present) affected the relative dominance of the sown (native target species) and non-sown (mostly non-native) species. We find strong support for lasting planting year weather effects in restored tallgrass prairies, thereby supporting the historically contingent model of community assembly in a real-world setting.

SUBMITTER: Groves AM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7136215 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Lasting signature of planting year weather on restored grasslands.

Groves Anna M AM Bauer Jonathan T JT Brudvig Lars A LA

Scientific reports 20200406 1

Ecological restoration - the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed ecosystems - is a critical component of conservation efforts, but is hindered by inconsistent, unpredictable outcomes. We investigated a source of this variation that is anecdotally suggested by practitioners, but for which empirical evidence is rare: the weather conditions during the first growing season after planting. The idea of whether natural communities face long-term consequences from conditions even many years in the past, ...[more]

PMID: 32249766

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Project description:Biodiversity is in global decline during the Anthropocene. Declines have been caused by multiple factors, such as habitat removal, invasive species, and disease, which are often targets for conservation management. However, conservation interventions are under threat from climate change induced weather extremes. Weather extremes are becoming more frequent and devastating and an example of this was the 2019/2020 Australian drought and mega-fires. We provide a case study the impacts of these extreme weather events had on a population of the threatened frog Litoria aurea that occurs in a constructed habitat which was designed to reduce the impact of introduced fish and chytrid-induced disease. We aimed to determine what factors influenced persistence so that the design of wetlands can be further optimised to future-proof threatened amphibians. We achieved this with 4 years (2016-2020) of intensive capture-recapture surveys during austral spring and summer across nine wetlands (n = 94 repeat surveys). As hypothesized, drought caused a sharp reduction in population size, but persistence was achieved. The most parsimonious predictor of survival was an interaction between maximum air temperature and rainfall, indicating that weather extremes likely caused the decline. Survival was positively correlated with wetland vegetation coverage, positing this is an important feature to target to enhance resilience in wetland restoration programs. Additionally, the benefits obtained from measures to reduce chytrid prevalence were not compromised during drought, as there was a positive correlation between salinity and survival. We emphasize that many species may not be able to persist under worse extreme weather scenarios. Despite the potential for habitat augmentation to buffer effects of extreme weather, global action on climate change is needed to reduce extinction risk.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10531-022-02387-9.

Dataset Information

Lasting signature of planting year weather on restored grasslands.

Publications

Lasting signature of planting year weather on restored grasslands.

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