Abstract
In industrialized countries, biodiversity is threatened by high atmospheric N deposition. In coastal dunes, blowouts can mitigate this through deposition of fresh sand, but lime-rich and lime-poor dunes may differ in blowout activity. We studied natural blowout activity and explanatory factors in 2000 and 2014 in up to 51 sites along the Dutch coast, representative for other parts of Europe. We further analyzed plant and soil characteristics related to P nutrition in seven sites in 2019 and found that blowout activity was intrinsically linked to interactions between the geosphere, pedosphere and biosphere. Blowout activity was higher in lime-rich than in lime-poor dunes, especially in 2014. This difference could not be explained by wind velocity and only partly by position in the landscape, but was associated with pH, critical N load and rabbit density. At high pH, P availability to the vegetation was low. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) plant species thus predominated, which belong to the most characteristic dune plants and may provide rabbit food of better quality than nonmycorrhizal (NM) or ericoid mycorrhizal (ErM) plants. Root biomass was also low at high pH, which may reduce cohesion of the sand and increase blowout activity, especially in areas with high rabbit density. At low pH, P availability increased, which favored NM and ErM rather than AM plants, and root biomass increased, which increased stability of the blowouts. As a restoration measure, (re)activation of blowouts may improve buffer capacity, characteristic biodiversity and conservation status of coastal dune grasslands. However, lime-poor dunes are more vulnerable to acidification, increase in P availability and blowout stabilization than lime-rich dunes. In extremely lime-poor dunes, it may even be better to let vegetation develop towards Dune heathlands, which are also EU priority habitats.
Highlights
IntroductionThis is especially true for coastal sand dunes, which are widespread and offer a number of important ecosystem services (Everard et al, 2010), and belong to the most threatened natural ecosystems in the world (Houston, 2008)
In many ecosystems, biodiversity is threatened by human impact
Blowout activity is a complex process regulated by many factors, which operate on different spatial and temporal scales
Summary
This is especially true for coastal sand dunes, which are widespread and offer a number of important ecosystem services (Everard et al, 2010), and belong to the most threatened natural ecosystems in the world (Houston, 2008). The combined effects lead to grass-encroachment, scrub development, loss of bare sand patches and acidification of the soil, which all contribute to loss in biodiversity (Provoost et al, 2011; Aggenbach et al, 2017; Kooijman et al, 2017)
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