Urban meadows as an alternative to short mown grassland: effects of composition and height on biodiversity
Urban meadows as an alternative to short mown grassland: effects of composition and height on biodiversity
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DOI：
10.1002/eap.1946
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发表时间：
2019-07-22
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Warren, Philip H.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Norton, Briony A.;Bending, Gary D.;Warren, Philip H.
越来越多的人呼吁在城市地区提供绿色空间，但绿色空间的生态质量和数量也很重要。短剪草地是温带地区城市绿地的主要形式，但需要大量的维护，并且通常对大多数类群的栖息地价值有限。越来越多的人提出了替代方案，但这些方案的生物多样性潜力还没有得到很好的理解。在6个城市公共绿地的重复实验中，我们使用了9种不同的多年生草甸种植，量化了植物区系多样性和草甸高度对植物、无脊椎动物和土壤微生物3个分类类群的丰富度和组成的相对作用。我们发现所有的草甸处理都被未播种的植物物种定殖，这表明如果管理得当，建立播种草甸并不妨碍进一步的地方决定的草地发展。在更高和更多样化的土地上，殖民物种更少，这表明竞争可能会限制入侵率。城市草甸处理含有不同于刈割草地的无脊椎动物和微生物群落。无脊椎动物类群对草甸植被高度和丰富度的变化均有响应，但植被高度大于刈割草地的大部分目更丰富。夏季较长植被的目丰富度增加，鞘翅目科丰富度随植物多样性的增加而增加。土壤表层（0 ~ 10 cm）微生物群落组成对植物种类组成较为敏感，深层（11 ~ 20 cm）微生物群落变化对植物高度的响应最大，细菌和真菌对植物高度的响应不同。除了提高当地居民的场地满意度外，原生多年生草甸种植可以产生生物多样性的草地，支持更丰富和更丰富的无脊椎动物群落，并且与短割草地相比，重构了植物、无脊椎动物和土壤微生物群落。我们的研究结果表明，通过种植城市草甸来代替一些修剪的舒适性草地，城市绿地的多样化可能会产生大量的生物多样性效益，而草甸类型的马赛克可能会最大化这种效益。
There are increasing calls to provide greenspace in urban areas, yet the ecological quality, as well as quantity, of greenspace is important. Short mown grassland designed for recreational use is the dominant form of urban greenspace in temperate regions but requires considerable maintenance and typically provides limited habitat value for most taxa. Alternatives are increasingly proposed, but the biodiversity potential of these is not well understood. In a replicated experiment across six public urban greenspaces, we used nine different perennial meadow plantings to quantify the relative roles of floristic diversity and height of sown meadows on the richness and composition of three taxonomic groups: plants, invertebrates, and soil microbes. We found that all meadow treatments were colonized by plant species not sown in the plots, suggesting that establishing sown meadows does not preclude further locally determined grassland development if management is appropriate. Colonizing species were rarer in taller and more diverse plots, indicating competition may limit invasion rates. Urban meadow treatments contained invertebrate and microbial communities that differed from mown grassland. Invertebrate taxa responded to changes in both height and richness of meadow vegetation, but most orders were more abundant where vegetation height was longer than mown grassland. Order richness also increased in longer vegetation and Coleoptera family richness increased with plant diversity in summer. Microbial community composition seems sensitive to plant species composition at the soil surface (0-10 cm), but in deeper soils (11-20 cm) community variation was most responsive to plant height, with bacteria and fungi responding differently. In addition to improving local residents' site satisfaction, native perennial meadow plantings can produce biologically diverse grasslands that support richer and more abundant invertebrate communities, and restructured plant, invertebrate, and soil microbial communities compared with short mown grassland. Our results suggest that diversification of urban greenspace by planting urban meadows in place of some mown amenity grassland is likely to generate substantial biodiversity benefits, with a mosaic of meadow types likely to maximize such benefits.