Data from: Habitat-based biodiversity responses to macroclimate and edaphic factors in European fen ecosystems

Jiménez-Alfaro, Borja1

Published Oct 02, 2023 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wh70rxwtt

Data files

Oct 02, 2023 version files 59.13 MB

Abstract

Understanding large-scale drivers of biodiversity in palustrine wetlands is challenging due to the combined effects of macroclimate and local edaphic conditions. In boreal and temperate fen ecosystems, the influence of macroclimate on biodiversity is modulated by hydrological settings across habitats, making It difficult to assess their vulnerability to climate change. Here, we investigate the influence of macroclimate and edaphic factors on three Essential Biodiversity Variables across eight ecologically defined habitats that align with ecosystem classifications and red lists. We used 27,555 vegetation plot samples from European fens to assess the influence of macroclimate and groundwater pH predictors on the geographic distribution of each habitat type. Additionally, we modeled the relative influence of macroclimate, water pH and water table depth on community species richness and composition, focusing on 309 plant specialists. Our models reveal strong effects of mean annual temperature, diurnal thermal range and summer temperature on biodiversity variables, with contrasting differences among habitats. While macroclimatic factors primarily shape geographic distributions and species richness, edaphic factors emerge as the primary drivers of composition for vascular plants and bryophytes. Annual precipitation exhibits non-linear effects on fen biodiversity, with varying impact across habitats with different hydrological characteristics, suggesting a minimum requirement of 600 mm of annual precipitation for the occurrence of fen ecosystems. Our results anticipate potential impacts of climate warming on European fens, with predictable changes among habitat types and geographic regions. Moreover, we provide evidence that the drivers of biodiversity in boreal and temperate fens are closely tied to the ecological characteristics of each habitat type and the dispersal abilities of bryophytes and vascular plants. Given that the influence of macroclimate and edaphic factors on fen ecosystems is habitat-specific, climate change research and conservation actions should consider ecological differentiation within functional IUCN ecosystems at continental and regional scales.

README: Data from: Habitat-based biodiversity responses to macroclimate and edaphic factors in European fen ecosystems

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wh70rxwtt

Description of the data and file structure

The data contains two compressed folders:

Folder Code:
The R code used for the statistical analyses includes:

"1.EDMs.R" for replicating distribution models of habitat types across Europe, and the associated maps and figures
"2.BRTs.R" for replicating models of species richness using Boosted Regression Trees with a spatial autocovariate
"3.GDMs" for replicating models of species composition using Generalized Dissimilarity models
"figures.R" for replicating the figures created from BRTs and GDMs

Folder Data:
The data used for conducting the analyses includes:
"Bio01.tif", "Bio02.tif", "Bio10.tif", "Bio12.tif" and "ph.tif": geo.tif files to upload the spatial predictors for the whole of Europe, where:

Bio01 = annual mean temperature (in ºC); Bio02 = Mean Diurnal Range or thermal range (in ºC); Bio10 = summer mean temperature (in ºC); Bio12 = annual precipitation (in mm * 1000); pH: water pH spatial model

"contrib_effect.xlsx" summarizes the relative importance (in %) of predictors in the BRTs (needed to create the figures), where:

The rows show the relative importance (from 0 to 100) of predictors (pH, spatial autocovariate, plot area, water table depth, and bioclimatic variables as explained above.
The columns show the habitat EUNIS types (Q22, etc.) and the models for vascular plants (v) and bryophytes (bry). Columns ending in "e" reflect the interpretation of effects (positive or negative) from the response curves obtained from the models (shown in the Supplementary Material).

"data.filtered.RData" includes all the occurrences used for computed Ecosystem Distribution Models, including:

name: EUNIS habitat types
X,Y: geographic coordinates in ETRS89 (UTM 30N)
Response: internal value to indicate the occurrence

"fens3.RData" and "fens3.filtered.RData" contain plot species richness and additional data necessary for conducting the BRT models:

ID: database identification (unique values)
eunis: EUNIS type
vas: number of vascular plants recorded in the plot
bry: number of bryophytes recorded in the plot
bio1,bio2,bio10 and bio12: bioclimatic variables as described above
lat/long: geographic coordinates in decimal degrees
area: plot area (in square meters)
pH and wtd: water pH and water table depth (in cm) calculated for each plot
"mosses.RData" and "vascular.RData" contain the compositional matrices data for bryophytes and vascular plants, respectively, where:
siteCol is the unique ID for each plot, as required in the gdm R package
eunis indicates the habitat type
x,y include the geographic coordinates in ETRS89 (UTM 30N)
sp1,sp2, etc. correspond to the cover values (in %) of all species sampled in each plot

Sharing/Access information

Original community data was primarily obtained from the European Vegetation Archive, https://euroveg.org/eva-database/

Code/Software

All R code was created in R version 4.1.3.
All necessary packages are indicated in the R scripts and they are all compatible with R 4.1.3, but please note that we used BIOMOD2 R-3.5.1, and the newer versions (since 2023) have changed the commands of some functions.