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Wet meadow restoration in Western Europe
- Source :
- Biological conservation, Biological Conservation, 140(3-4), 318-328. ELSEVIER SCI LTD
- Publication Year :
- 2007
- Publisher :
- ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2007.
-
Abstract
- Techniques such as rewetting, topsoil removal, diaspore transfer or combinations of these are increasingly applied in fen meadow and flood meadow restoration in Western Europe. In this paper, we present a quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of the commonly used meadow restoration methods. We use the change in 'saturation index' to evaluate the degree of success. The index reflects the completeness of restored communities in comparison to regional target communities. Meadow restoration has limited success in most cases, with an average increase in species richness below 10% of the regional species pool. Restoration success was partly determinated by the starting situation. The more species-rich the starting situation, the higher the saturation index after restoration but, at the same time, the smaller the increase in the number of target species due to restoration. Top soil removal and diaspore transfer were found to contribute most to restoration success. A combination of top soil removal and diaspore transfer and a combination of all three techniques appeared to be the most effective measure and resulted in an increase in the saturation index of up to 16%. Rewetting alone had no measurable effect on restoration success.
- Subjects :
- Wet meadow
Soil seed bank
Flood-meadow
Fen-meadow
ARABLE FIELDS
SOIL SEED BANK
Grassland
DISPERSAL
top soil removal
Biology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Nature and Landscape Conservation
geography
Topsoil
geography.geographical_feature_category
rewetting
Ecology
WETLAND RESTORATION
GROUNDWATER LEVELS
Forestry
Herbaceous plant
FEN-MEADOW
diaspore transfer
saturation index
restoration success
Chemistry
TOPSOIL REMOVAL
Environmental science
FLOOD-MEADOWS
Species richness
VEGETATION
PLANT TRAITS
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 18732917 and 00063207
- Volume :
- 140
- Issue :
- 3-4
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Biological Conservation
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a0a2a6804d4afaf4dde4e65f54ed1db1