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Renaissance of a rural artifact in a city with a million people: biodiversity responses to an agro-forestry restoration in a large urban traditional fruit orchard
- Source :
- Urban Ecosystems.
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2017.
-
Abstract
- The rural landscapes surrounding large cities are rapidly becoming incorporated into the urban environment. The most conspicuous changes involve green spaces, such as former agro-forestry systems like fruit orchards. In this paper, we assess the influence on biodiversity of restoring a large urban traditional fruit orchard as reflected by six selected taxa: plants, lichens, butterflies, beetles, orthopteroids and birds. The study was performed in Prague, which is the capital city of the Czech Republic and has more than a million inhabitants. We studied the effect of orchard renewal in 45 patches (15 for birds and 30 for other taxa). The majority of taxa responded positively to the restoration. The restoration had a significant positive effect on the species richness of lichens, butterflies and beetles. All taxa showed significantly altered species compositions, and the number of red-listed species increased. Orchards have a high potential for multi-functional use. Orchards are productive agro-forestry systems and host numerous possible human activities. Therefore, orchard restoration also has a social aspect. Moreover, our research in this artificial ecosystem revealed that its restoration increased the biodiversity and conservation potential of the associated areas.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Artifact (archaeology)
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Ecology
Host (biology)
Agroforestry
Biodiversity
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Urban Studies
Geography
Taxon
Urban ecology
Species richness
Orchard
Lichen
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15731642 and 10838155
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Urban Ecosystems
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........c8e4e38feb3f573d17a8a54b323e612f