Dominant drivers of plant community assembly vary by soil type and time in reclaimed forests
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Dominant drivers of plant community assembly vary by soil type and time in reclaimed forests Kaitlyn E. Trepanier
. Bradley D. Pinno . Ruth C. Errington
Received: 30 June 2020 / Accepted: 29 October 2020 Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Information on plant community assembly mechanisms is limited on forest reclamation sites after mining in the Canadian boreal forest. We assessed the change in plant community composition after Year 2 and Year 5 on species-rich forest floor mineral mix (FFMM) and species-poor peat mineral mix (PMM) reclamation soils by examining assembly mechanisms, i.e., seed bank, seed rain, biotic dispersal, vegetative expansion, and competition. Initial plant cover and diversity were greater on FFMM due to nonnative species originating from the seed bank, which had 59 more seeds in the FFMM. By Year 5, both soil types had approximately 40% cover and 80 species richness due to the addition of wind and bioticdispersed species and were characterized by a shift towards native species. Native forbs using vegetative reproduction expanded up to 2 m from FFMM into PMM. At Year 5 competition does not seem to have a large role in the structuring of the vegetation community. Overall, multiple factors were involved in structuring plant communities on reclamation sites,
Communicated by Lesley Rigg. K. E. Trepanier (&) B. D. Pinno University of Alberta, 442 Earth Science Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada e-mail: [email protected] R. C. Errington Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, AB, Canada
but we observed a general convergence between plant communities on different soil types in a relatively short period of time. Keywords Plant community mechanisms Succession Reclamation Boreal
Introduction Revealing the mechanisms underlying succession leads to a better understanding of plant community assembly (Cook et al. 2005). Plant community assembly deals with various mechanisms such as the arrival, establishment, and persistence of species present at any particular location and how they are related to the species pool within the region (Hobbs et al. 2014). To be able to predict future successional trajectories of ecosystems, we need a better understanding of how plant communities are establishing following disturbances. The boreal region in Canada accounts for 28% of the country’s forests and is a disturbance adapted ecosystem (Brandt et al. 2013). Plant community succession is strongly influenced by the type, severity, and frequency of the disturbance (Hart and Chen 2006; Macdonald and Fenniak 2007). Following a disturbance, vegetation re-establishes through buried seeds and propagules or arrival from surrounding areas
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Plant Ecol
(Roberts 2004; Rydgren et al. 1998). Oil sands mining represents a disturbance that exceeds the severity of natural disturbances in this region (Dhar et al. 2018). During oil sands mining the topsoil, subsoil, and overburden are removed and then placed on constructed landforms during subsequent
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