What is it about?
It is hard to know if invasive plants will become a bigger or smaller problem in the future. We monitored plant communities for 13 years in 25 different fields. These fields had been abandoned from agriculture between two and fifty years before we began monitoring. Our direct observations for 13 years revealed changes in plant communities, but both techniques indicated that disturbance allows short-lived, non-native plants to establish and persist. Neither technique suggested that native plants invaded disturbed fields or that non-native plants invaded undisturbed fields.
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Why is it important?
Results are important because they show that soil disturbance in this system allows non-native weedy plants to invade. These plants appear to maintain a system in which they can persist. Weedy fields remained weedy for at least 63 years after disturbance. Soil disturbance, therefore, results in long-term changes to plant communities.
Perspectives
Soil disturbance causes long-term problems. Soil disturbance 'opens the door' to plant invasion. These invasions can decrease plant diversity, forage value and change fire regimes and carbon storage and remove habitat for native animals.
andrew kulmatiski
Utah State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chronosequence and direct observation approaches reveal complementary community dynamics in a novel ecosystem, PLOS One, March 2019, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207047.
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