Resistance and resilience of species composition: Thirty years of experimental mismanagement and subsequent restoration in a species rich meadow
Data files
Jan 27, 2025 version files 328.92 KB
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Data_Leps_Lisner_EcolEvol_2025.xlsx
326.80 KB
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README.md
2.12 KB
Abstract
Traditionally managed grasslands are among the most species rich communities, which are threatened by land use changes – management intensification or abandonment. The resistance of their species composition to mismanagement and ability to recover after re-establishment of traditional management is of prime conservational interest. In a manipulative experiment in a wet meadow, we simulated mismanagement by a factorial combination of abandonment of mowing and fertilization. The dominant species Molinia caerulea was removed in half of the plots to assess its role in community dynamics. The 21 years’ mismanagement period was followed by the re-establishment of the traditional management. The plots were sampled yearly from 1994 (the baseline data, before introduction of the experimental treatments), until 2023. Estimates of cover of all vascular plant species provided the species richness and effective number of species. For each year, the chord distances to baseline species composition and to corresponding control plot were calculated. The compositional data were analyzed by constrained ordination methods, and the univariate characteristics by Repeated Measures ANOVA. All the plots, including those with traditional management throughout the whole experiment, underwent directional changes, probably caused by a decrease in groundwater level due to global warming. Both fertilization and abandonment lead to a loss of competitively weak, usually low-statured species, due to increased asymmetric competition for light. The effect of fertilization was faster and stronger than that of abandonment demonstrating weaker resistance to fertilization. The removal of dominant species partially mitigated negative effects only in unmown, non-fertilized plots. The recovery following mismanagement cessation was faster (signifying higher resilience) in unmown than in fertilized plots, where it was slowed by a legacy of fertilization. In a changing world, two reference plot types are recommended for assessment of resistance and resilience, one original state, and one reflecting compositional changes independent of treatments.
README: Title of Dataset: Resistance and resilience of species composition: thirty years of experimental mismanagement and subsequent restoration in a species rich meadow
The dataset contains five lists.
The first list contains compositional data for individual species across all 24 plots for all the years of the study (1994-2023). It is coded, for example, as r1994p1 which corresponds to the year 1994 and plot id 1. Each column (2-97) contains species covers. Zeroes refer to species missing from communities, so their cover value is a true zero. The values are in relative, i.e. expressed as a percentage. Note that the relative species covers do not sum up to 100% but can exceed it as individual species can overlap in the vertical profile. The data was used for the calculation of plot level species richness and pairwise chord distances. These data also served as an entry for all multivariate analyses providing information about temporal changes in community structure. See details in Methods.
The second list contains information about experimental setting (which plots were mown, fertilized or Molinia caerulea removed) effective number of species and community weighted mean of the species vegetative height (cm).
The third list contains information about nutrient levels (total phosphorus and total nitrogen) in each plot in the year 2022.
The fourth list contains information about temperature and precipitation for the study period. These data that are under free copyright license for non-commercial use, were downloaded from the Climate Change meteoblue model, which utilizes data from ERA5, the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate (accessible at: https://www.meteoblue.com/en/climate-change/ohrazen%c3%ad_czechia_3069123)
The fifth list contains detailed information about all variables in the preceding lists.
Description of the Data and file structure
Details about data structure and meaning of individual columns are described in detail in the fifth list in the .xlsx file.