Abstract
Achieving biologically diverse agricultural systems requires a commitment to changes in land use. While in-field agrobiodiversity is a critical route to such a transition, riparian systems remain an important, yet understudied, pathway to achieve key diversity and ecosystem services and targets. Notably, at the interface of agricultural landscapes and aquatic systems, the diversification of riparian buffers with trees reduces the non-point source pollution in waterways. However, in riparian agroforestry systems, little is known about herbaceous community patterns and, importantly, the herbaceous community’s role in governing carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling. Our study investigated herbaceous community taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity patterns in riparian (i) grasslands (GRASSLAND), (ii) rehabilitated agroforests (AGROFOREST-REHAB), and (iii) remnant forests (AGROFOREST-NATURAL). We then determined the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships between community functional diversity metrics, C and N cycling, and greenhouse gas fluxes. We observed significant differences in taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity among riparian buffer types. We found that herbaceous plant communities in riparian agroforestry systems expressed plant trait syndromes associated with fast-growing, resource acquiring strategies, while grassland buffer plants exhibited slow-growing, resource conserving strategies. Herbaceous communities with high functional diversity and resource acquiring trait syndromes, such as those in the agroforestry riparian systems, were significantly correlated with lower rates of soil CO2 efflux and N mineralization, both of which are key fluxes related to ecosystem service delivery. Our findings provide further evidence that functionally diverse, and not necessarily taxonomically diverse, plant communities are strongly correlated to positive ecosystem processes in riparian agroforestry systems, and that these communities contribute to the transition of agricultural lands toward biologically and functionally diverse landscapes.
Highlights
Increasing the biological complexity of agroecosystems can substantially enhance ecosystem services at regional and global scales [1,2]
The highest species richness (SR) values were observed in the GRASSLAND (7.13 ± 0.52) and AGROFOREST-REHAB (8.88 ± 1.06) buffers, with the lowest species richness observed in the AGROFOREST-NATURAL buffer (3.63 ± 0.32)
Our findings contribute some of the first data on herbaceous community diversity patterns in riparian agroforestry systems
Summary
Increasing the biological complexity of agroecosystems can substantially enhance ecosystem services at regional and global scales [1,2]. While it has been well established that vegetated riparian buffers can reduce non-point source inputs (sediment, nutrients, and pesticides) into waterways [5,6,7], these buffers have the potential to perform a number of other ecosystem functions. Plant communities within these systems have an influence on carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling processes either directly through root uptake and plant chemical cycling, or indirectly through the supply of litter and the stabilization of nutrients in the soil [8,9]. The delivery of these services is presumably highly related to the specific plant communities
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