Abstract
Understanding the ecosystem functions and services of central European kettle holes (small wetlands) requires knowledge about their spatiotemporal dynamics. A lot of existing research has been conducted on the wet–dry cycles of North American potholes, but much less is known about kettle holes. Based on the extreme weather conditions between 2015 and 2020, we aimed to quantify differences among dominant plant communities of kettle holes using unmanned aerial systems. Different dominant plant communities were differently affected by dry and wet intervals with a major increase in terrestrial plants. Multivariate analysis showed strong variability in plant community composition for permanent and semi-permanent kettle holes, where hydrophytes decreased and nitrophilous perennials increased. Although we cannot provide quantitative results in succession over a five-year observation period, we found indications of progressive succession towards irreversible alternative stable states with woody plants for some kettle holes, especially of the “storage type”. Therefore, we assume stronger changes in proportion of wetland types in kettle holes compared to potholes and we expect the proportion of wood-dominated kettle holes to increase in the central European landscape in the future, leading to enhanced homogenization of the landscape accompanied by a loss of ecosystem functions and services.
Highlights
Accepted: 26 February 2021The understanding of ecosystem functioning in small, highly variable wetland ecosystems such as potholes or kettle holes requires sufficient knowledge about their spatiotemporal dynamics [1,2,3]
The authors of this study showed that variability in macrophyte communities of the flooded area among individual kettle holes explains more variance than among years, they found non-consistent interannual patterns within communities of single kettle holes
Our study contributes to a better understanding about effects of water level variations on wet–dry cycles of vegetation in central European kettle holes
Summary
The understanding of ecosystem functioning in small, highly variable wetland ecosystems such as potholes or kettle holes requires sufficient knowledge about their spatiotemporal dynamics [1,2,3]. This is even more important under climate change conditions where changing precipitation patterns cause extreme weather conditions [4]. Cyclic changes in precipitation are normal climatic phenomena and result in oscillating water levels in small wetlands around a long-term mean [6,7,8]. Differences in oscillating water levels—due to natural meteorological variability or climate change—directly affect the vegetation dynamics of small wetlands and may shift them to alternative stable states [14,15,16]
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