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Functional groups and dispersal strategies as guides for predicting vegetation dynamics on reclaimed mines

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Abstract

The development of species richness and plant cover through time are two important measures that are often used to assess success in land reclamation schemes. We expand this approach by considering functional groups in terms of life-history traits and dispersal strategies, as important components of ecosystem function and colonisation. Here, we test, if the species richness and cover of these functional groups are changed during post-treatment succession in 26 reclaimed coal mines, and whether these changes are related to selected soil variables (C:N, total N, and available P). Species richness showed a skewed unimodal response with time since reclamation, with a peak at 13 years. The richness of life-forms showed a clear dominance order starting with annuals, followed by perennial herbs and then woody species; whereas, when plant cover was considered, perennial herbs dominated the entire sequence. Dispersal strategies showed that anemochorous and zoochorous species were the most important groups. Soil variables were correlated with richness and cover of perennial herbs, woody species, and with anemochorous richness and zoochorous species cover. Our findings indicate that those species which respond during succession on reclaimed coal wastes are controlled in some part, by the attributes of functional groups, whereas the colonisation process is more dependent on seed sources from the local species pool than on soil properties. Our results also highlighted that the use of life-forms and dispersal strategy patterns improved the description and prediction of vegetation dynamics, and allowed us to identify successional stages better. We discussed the implication of these findings for future reclamation approaches in similar areas.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank ‘UMINSA’ for the information and permission to work on their mines and financial support through the Art.83 contract (Project18I PJJ) to C. Martínez-Ruiz. The authors also thank the Basque-Country Government (Programa de Formación de Personal Investigador y Programa de Perfeccionamiento Post-doctoral en el Extranjero del Dpto. de Educación, Universidades e Investigación) for financial support to Josu González Alday (BFI06.114; BFI-2010-245).

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Correspondence to Josu G. Alday.

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Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 List of species found in the 26 mine sites in Palencia province, northern Spain

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Alday, J.G., Pallavicini, Y., Marrs, R.H. et al. Functional groups and dispersal strategies as guides for predicting vegetation dynamics on reclaimed mines. Plant Ecol 212, 1759–1775 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-011-9947-6

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