Wetland plant community variation across replicate urban to rural gradients: non-native species as both drivers and pass
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Wetland plant community variation across replicate urban to rural gradients: non-native species as both drivers and passengers in systems impacted by anthropogenic land-use Christian M. King 1 & Stephen M. Hovick 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Anthropogenic land-use change impacts ecological communities in urban and rural landscapes, and wetlands are particularly vulnerable despite the valuable ecosystem services they provide. Urbanized non-wetland systems are often enriched in nonnative plant species, and similar patterns in wetlands would have implications for ecosystem function and biodiversity. We evaluated landscape-scale patterns of plant community diversity across gradients of rural to urban land-use, testing whether diversity was related to environmental conditions indicative of surrounding land-use. We surveyed vegetation and collected soil samples from 45 wetlands throughout Ohio, USA. Sites were categorized based on surrounding land-use as intense urban, moderate urban, or rural, representing 15 replicate urban to rural gradients. Non-native richness was 56% greater and nonnative relative abundance 74% greater in intense urban sites compared to rural sites. Structural equation modeling indicated that high non-native relative abundance caused reductions in native plant richness but not native Shannon diversity, which was instead related to high concentrations of urban-associated soil contaminants such as cadmium and sodium. Our results support both versions of the driver-passenger model of invasion impacts, depending on the response: native richness is directly limited by competition with non-native species (the driver model), while native diversity is limited more by urban-associated stressors that also affect non-natives (the passenger model). The few wetlands remaining in highly urban areas thus experience a range of constraints affecting multiple dimensions of wetland health. We argue it is in these sites specifically where the benefits of restoring wetland ecosystems will be maximized. Keywords Urbanization . Soil salinity . Eutrophication . Biological invasions . Driver-passenger model . Hybrid cattail (Typha x glauca) . Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) . Rice cutgrass (Leersia oryzoides)
Introduction Changes in land-use from human development have led to global ecosystem degradation (DeFries et al. 2004; Foley et al. 2005), with both urbanization and intensive agriculture contributing to habitat fragmentation, soil erosion, excess runoff, climate change, and biodiversity loss (DeFries et al. 2004). Wetland systems are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic land-use change, resulting in widespread wetland loss Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01012-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Stephen M. Hovick [email protected] 1
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
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