Predicting plant biodiversity in changing Dutch landscapes: evaluation and prediction
Informations
- Funding country
Netherlands- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2000
- End date
- 6/3/2005
- Budget
- 122,931 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALW Biodiversity 2000-2005 | Grant | 1/1/2000 | 6/3/2005 | 122,931 EUR |
Organisations
Abstract
The effects of nature restoration practices are often predicted from abiotic environmental factor such as soil moisture, pH and nutrients. Indeed these factors can be affected by rewetting, liming and topsoil removal. However, it is difficult to realize the establishment of the accompanying target communities including the target species. Persistent seeds from some species may be present in the soil; many species, however, have to recolonize the target area by dispersal from elsewhere. The PhD-project 'analysis of plant extinctions and invasions' renders lists of 300 declined and 150 increased species in the Netherlands, including their spatial dynamics in the 201h century. The PhD-project 'spatio-functional analysis' studies improved descriptions of target communities by taking into account spatio-temporal success ional series, including the established vegetation and the soil seed bank. Moreover, lists of target species will be related to earlier observations in the land units studied. It further estimates life-history traits such as seed longevity, dispersal and adult longevity from literature and experiments. In collaboration with the PhD-projects and the NWO/biodiversity programme Bobbink (Restoration of biodiversity on the Pleistocene sandy deposits in the Netherlands), the current postdoc-project will built up a database on life history traits for the evaluation of common life history traits of declined and increased species in order to improve predictions on the probability of colonization by target species. These predictions will be validated by long-term observations in well-studied land regions, namely, the wet and dry parts of the Pleistocene sandy area of the Netherlands. Apart from the case-studies, the results of various nature restoration projects in the Netherlands will be validated. Finally, the project will result in an up-to-date and extended database on seed properties, that can be used as an input of the expert system SYNBIOSIS to be developed by the Institute of Forestry and Nature Research. This expert system aims at improved predictions of the effects of nature restoration.