Abstract
Ecological restoration — the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed ecosystems — is a critical component of conservation efforts, but is hindered by inconsistent, unpredictable outcomes. We investigated a source of this variation that is anecdotally suggested by practitioners, but for which empirical evidence is rare: the weather conditions during the first growing season after planting. The idea of whether natural communities face long-term consequences from conditions even many years in the past, called historical contingency, is a debated idea in ecological research. Using a large dataset (83 sites) across a wide geographic distribution (three states), we find evidence that precipitation and temperatures in the planting year (2–19 years before present) affected the relative dominance of the sown (native target species) and non-sown (mostly non-native) species. We find strong support for lasting planting year weather effects in restored tallgrass prairies, thereby supporting the historically contingent model of community assembly in a real-world setting.
Highlights
Ecological restoration — the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed ecosystems — is a critical component of conservation efforts, but is hindered by inconsistent, unpredictable outcomes
We evaluated the influence and relative importance of year effects resulting from planting year weather conditions for plant communities within restored tallgrass prairies
We show that weather conditions have lasting effects on prairie plant communities, through effects on the non-sown species, and that these effects can be of greater magnitude than those of other important drivers of restoration outcomes in this system
Summary
Ecological restoration — the rebuilding of damaged or destroyed ecosystems — is a critical component of conservation efforts, but is hindered by inconsistent, unpredictable outcomes. Weather conditions after planting may affect restoration outcomes by initiating historically contingent community assembly. These planting year effects (hereafter, year effects) on restored communities make logical sense, but evidence for year effects in the literature is rare, since most restoration projects and ecological studies are not replicated across planting years[27]. Inter-annual variation in weather conditions has been shown to affect annual weed communities in agricultural ecosystems[32,33] This evidence has demonstrated the potential for www.nature.com/scientificreports weather during the planting year to influence community assembly; it is unclear whether influences will last for the longer timescales over which restoration success is typically evaluated (e.g., decades). Evidence that demonstrates year effects over longer time scales is even rarer, with one notable exception: in a grassland restoration experiment in the North American Great Plains, herbicide application on an invasive grass followed by sowing of a native grass was highly successful even a decade later when planted in average or above-average precipitation years, but reverted to dominance by the invasive grass when planted in an exceptionally dry year[34,35]
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