Abstract
Ponds are biodiversity hotspots, but pond conservation is hampered by problems auditing these small, often temporary, habitats. Data on temporal changes to the number of ponds in response to weather variations are lacking. Annual and seasonal changes to the numbers and area of wetted ponds in a lowland farm in England were surveyed by field walks between November 2010 and November 2013. Plant communities were recorded to identify variations in pond type between land-uses. The study period coincided with severe drought up until April 2012 followed by record breaking precipitation. The wetted areas of ponds in wetlands and dune slacks showed the strongest relationship with rainfall over the preceding 4–6 months, whilst the areas of ponds in arable or pasture fields varied more with rainfall in the previous month. Ponds from different land-uses supported different plant communities and all types added to the overall total site biodiversity. Plant communities of ponds in arable fields benefitted from the extreme wet summer of 2012. The results show that the number and area of ponds varied significantly between years and seasons and that different pond types in different land-uses may vary in their response to extreme weather.
Highlights
Ponds and small wetlands are ubiquitous throughout the Earth’s terrestrial biomes from the equatorial tropics (Fasona & Omojola, 2009) to Antarctica (Allende & Mataloni, 2013), from pristine forests, intensively managed agricultural lowlands (e.g. Taiwan, Chou et al, 2014) and urban landscapes (Hassall, 2014)
Total wetted areas of the four pond types recorded at the May and November site visits varied from a minimum of 43,000 m2 in the early summer of 2011 to over 115,000 m2 in the late autumn of 2012 (Fig. 3)
The objectives of the survey were primarily to quantify the number of ponds in a farmed lowland landscape, how their number and area changed over 3 years in response to rainfall and how these changes might vary between ponds in different land-uses
Summary
Ponds and small wetlands are ubiquitous throughout the Earth’s terrestrial biomes from the equatorial tropics (Fasona & Omojola, 2009) to Antarctica (Allende & Mataloni, 2013), from pristine forests (e.g. the Amazon, Heckenberger et al, 2007), intensively managed agricultural lowlands (e.g. Taiwan, Chou et al, 2014) and urban landscapes (Hassall, 2014). Ponds are disproportionately rich in overall species and rarities at the landscape scale compared to streams, rivers and lakes, (Williams et al, 2003; Davies et al, 2008). More recently their potential significance for ecosystem services has been highlighted, e.g. for controlling eutrophication or carbon sequestration (Downing, 2010; Cereghino et al, 2014; Gilbert et al, 2014) but uncertainty about the number and size of small ponds, especially those \0.1 km in area, makes generalisations difficult (Downing et al, 2006)
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