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Short-term responses of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity to riparian restoration measures designed to control the invasive arundo donax L.

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posted on 2020-01-03, 11:37 authored by Daniel Bruno, Víctor Zapata, Simone GuareschiSimone Guareschi, Félix Picazo, Ettore Dettori, José Antonio Carbonell, Andrés Millán, Josefa Velasco, Francisco Robledano
Invasive species are among the top five causes of biodiversity loss worldwide. Arundo donax has progressively colonized the riparian zones of Mediterranean rivers with detrimental effects on terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, being catalogued as one of the 100 worst invasive species. In order to control this invasive species and restore native riparian vegetation, different methods have been traditionally used, depending on the environmental, economic and social context. Here, the effect of repeated above-ground removal of A. donax on aquatic and terrestrial communities was assessed by testing two different frequencies of mowing (monthly-intensive and quarterly-extensive), combined with the plantation of native species. Specifically, it was evaluated if riparian vegetation, birds and aquatic macroinvertebrates showed significant responses throughout time and between restoration treatments based on 4-year annual biomonitoring data (2015–2018). Changes in taxonomic diversity and ecological quality indices for the different biological communities were tested using mixed-effect models (LMEs). Similarly, comparisons between restored and reference sites were also performed. LMEs were also applied to assess how riparian variables were related to bird and aquatic macroinvertebrate indices. NMDS and MGLM-Mvabund analyses were performed to detect significant post-treatment differences in taxa composition compared to the initial state and reference sites. During this short-term assessment, increases in riparian and aquatic macroinvertebrate richness and quality indices were found, as well as significant decreases in A. donax height, density and cover, without significant differences between restoration treatments. However, differential effects between extensive (positive-neutral effect) and intensive treatments (neutral-negative effect) were detected for bird richness, density and abundance. After three years of restoration actions, restored sites are still far from reference values in terms of taxa composition, species richness and ecological quality, especially for riparian vegetation and birds. Given the high cost and the great efforts required for restoration, extensive repeated mowing, together with native species plantation, are only recommended on river reaches not fully invaded by A. donax and with a high ecological interest.

Funding

European Commission through LIFE+ RIPISILVANATURA LIFE 13 BIO/ES/1407

“Juan de la Cierva” research contract (Spanish MINECO FJCI-2016-29856)

Royal Society-Newton International Fellowship (NIF/R1/180346)

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Water

Volume

11

Issue

12

Publisher

MDPI AG

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2019-11-25

Publication date

2019-12-03

Copyright date

2019

ISSN

2073-4441

eISSN

2073-4441

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Simone Guareschi Deposit date: 19 December 2019

Article number

2551

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