e-journal

Identifying the multi-scale spatial structure of plant community determinants of an important national resource

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Questions: What is the significance of climate and land-use management as
determinants of plant species composition of Scotland’s soft coasts, and how are
these determinants spatially scaled? What is the relative contribution of different
community assembly processes in governing the coastal plant communities of
an important national resource?
Location: Scotland, UK.
Methods: We used national-scale survey data of Scotland’s soft coasts, and a
subset representative of machair grassland, a conservation priority habitat. Principal
coordinates of neighbour matrices (PCNM), an eigenvector-based method,
was used to assess the spatial component of environmental determinants atmultiple
scales. The variation-partitioning framework was applied to unravel the
scale-specific importance, relative to the study design (Broad > 50 km, Meso 10
–50 km, small + fine 1.5–10.0 km) of each environmental predictor set.
Results: Modelled environmental and spatial predictors captured ca. 20% of
the variation for both response matrices. Management predictors captured significant
proportions, identifying vegetation structure, proxies for grazing intensity
and disturbance as important descriptors of patterns in species composition
for both data sets. The spatial scale of management predictors was poorly captured
bymodelled PCNMvariables, suggesting spatially dependentmanagement
variables operate at finer spatial scales than this study detected. Climate also captured
significant, yet smaller fractions of variation compared to management.
Potential evapotranspiration (PET) and humidity were identified as important
climatic determinants of species composition operating entirely at the broad spatial
scale. Pure spatial fractions across all scales were significant (P
0.001) for
both data sets, alluding to unmeasured, spatially structured environmental variables
such as soil chemistry and/or exposure at larger scales, and potentially biotic
process such as seed dispersal at the finest detectable scale.
Conclusions: The use of spatial PCNM variables within the variation-partitioning
framework is a valuable tool for dissecting scale-specific importance of environmental
determinants of species composition. This study reveals important
climatic and management determinants of Scotland’s soft coast and machair
vegetation, and will help to better understand the relative scale at which they
operate.

Keywords: Environmental drivers; Machair; PCNM; Scotland; Spatial analysis; Species composition; Variation partitioning

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

Journal of Vegetation Science

No. Panggil

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Penerbit

: International Association for Vegetation Science., 2014

Deskripsi Fisik

Journal of Vegetation Science 25 (2014) 184–197

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

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Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

PERTANIAN.

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

agus

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