Will autogenic succession be sufficient to recover from vegetation cover loss or will soil condition need to be addresse
- PDF / 5,034,582 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 78 Downloads / 176 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Will autogenic succession be sufficient to recover from vegetation cover loss or will soil condition need to be addressed in the arid lands of Kuwait? Meshal M. Abdullah 1 & Rusty A. Feagin 1 & Mansour T. Abdullah 2 & Layla Al-Musawi 3
Received: 27 July 2016 / Accepted: 14 February 2017 / Published online: 2 March 2017 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2017
Abstract Intervention is often required for the restoration of damaged arid ecosystems, particularly when the base environmental conditions are no longer suitable for autogenic recovery. Umm Nigga, in Kuwait, was damaged by overgrazing and destructive camping. It is unclear whether its restoration will require remediation of the soil conditions, or whether autogenic succession can occur once the area is fenced and released from this pressure. Thus, in this project, we assessed the current condition of the site by collecting soil samples and vegetation assessment within each ecosystem and determined suitable locations for the re-vegetation of native seeds and seedlings using geographical information system. Our results showed that the vegetation in the coastal portions of the ecosystem was not damaged. However, in the desert ecosystem locations, vegetation cover was very low and composed of very few species in the damaged areas but still, most soil nutrients were in supply similar to that in the control areas. We conclude that soil remediation and re-vegetation are, like-
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12517-017-2911-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Meshal M. Abdullah [email protected]
1
Department Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
2
Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3BF, UK
3
Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science KFAS, Kuwait City, Kuwait
ly, not necessary to restore the damaged sites in any of these ecosystems. Rather, fencing alone will probably release the ecosystem. With these sites as a model, a conceptual framework is presented for arid ecosystem assessment and restoration planning. Keywords Soil assessment . Vegetation cover . Ecosystem assessment . Geographical information system (GIS) . Kuwait
Introduction Ecosystem restoration is now globally recognized as a key component in conservation programs and essential to longterm sustainability in arid and semi-arid lands (Aronson and Alexander 2013). Overgrazing, and the resulting desertification and soil compaction, can dramatically influence these ecosystems (Perrow and Davy 2002; Grau et al. 2010; Costantini 2016). Intervention is often required for the restoration of damaged ecosystems in arid lands as their recovery via natural processes may take centuries (Bainbridge 2007). Autogenic succession can be limited in arid ecosystems, and the base environmental conditions must often be remediated before biota can survive due to the low amount of nutrients, which are concentrated in t
Data Loading...
