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Dryad

Data from: Promoting plant diversity and habitat heterogeneity through vineyard terracing

Abstract

Questions: Viticulture on steep slopes has shaped landscape and biodiversity in many regions, but insufficient profitability has led to management cessation and shrub encroachment. A solution to maintain cultivation economically viable could be vineyard terracing. We aimed to identify the potential of terracing to enhance plant diversity and habitat heterogeneity in vineyards, analyse effects of management intensity on vineyard vegetation, and assess how plant communities change after vineyard abandonment.

Location: Wine-growing region of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley in Hesse (50.042342°N, 7.814533°E) and Rhineland-Palatinate (50.119139°N, 7.719275°E), Germany.           

Methods: We recorded vascular plant species and local vineyard parameters in vertically oriented vineyards with vegetated and tilled open inter-rows, in terraced vineyards with tilled terrace inter-rows and extensively managed embankments and in vineyard fallows in a total of 45 study sites. We used plant species richness, Ellenberg indicator values and Grime’s strategy types to describe how traits and ecological requirements respond to distinct vineyard management.  

Results: Plant species richness and composition were determined by management-derived disturbance intensities. Extensively managed embankments had a distinct plant community, the highest plant species richness, more perennial and indicator species, and lower nitrogen indicator values compared to inter-rows. In contrast, highly disturbed open and terrace inter-rows revealed plant communities associated with annuals and ruderals, but species richness did not differ between terrace inter-rows and embankments. Plant communities of fallows were completely different with lower plant diversity.       

Conclusions: Our results highlight the potential of terraced vineyards for plant diversity with nutrient-poor, extensively managed embankments providing conditions that have become rare in modern agricultural systems. A long environmental gradient from terrace inter-rows to embankments created habitat heterogeneity at a narrow space. In contrast, intensive inter-row management in vertically oriented vineyards hampers high plant diversity and abandonment fosters the spread of woody species at the expanse of plant diversity.