Abstract
Climate and human-induced wetland degradation has accelerated in recent years, not only resulting in reduced ecosystem services but also greatly affecting the composition and diversity of wetland plant communities. To date, the knowledge of the differences in community parameters and their successional trends in degraded wetlands remains scarce. Here based on remote sensing images, geographic information system technology, and statistical methods, we produced a successional gradient map of the Yeyahu Wetland Nature Reserve in Beijing, which has experienced a steady decline in water level in recent decades. In addition, we analyzed community composition and diversity along with each identified gradient. The results showed that community diversity decreases while dominance increases with the progress of succession, with the highest diversity occurring during the early stage of succession. Moreover, the community demonstrates greater similarity among subareas during later successional stages, and the similarity coefficients calculated from the important value (IV) of each species are more accurate. Correlation analysis showed that the impact of soil factors on diversity was not significant at a subarea scale, although these nutrients showed an increasing trend with the community succession. Furthermore, the IVs of the dominant species had a particularly significant impact on diversity, showing a significantly negative correlation with diversity indices and a significantly positive correlation with dominance indices. Further analysis showed that the retreat of water level resulted from sustained drought and local human activities was a major extrinsic driving force resulting in observed differences in the community successional stages, which resulted in differences in community composition and diversity. On the other hand, interspecific competition was the main intrinsic mechanism, which significantly influenced the IVs of the dominant species and community diversity. The results of this study could aid in improving the understanding of community composition, diversity, and its successional trends in degraded wetlands.
Highlights
IntroductionSuccession is essentially a complex ecological process involving different types of interactions at multiple temporal and spatial scales, including those between plants and their environment and intra- and interspecific interactions and competition within a community
Community succession is a central issue in ecological research [1, 2]
The present study showed that the three subareas which were considered varied to different degrees in their plant community composition and diversity
Summary
Succession is essentially a complex ecological process involving different types of interactions at multiple temporal and spatial scales, including those between plants and their environment and intra- and interspecific interactions and competition within a community. This is observed in the case of long-term community succession, where interactions and ecological processes tend to be more diverse and complex. Some studies analyzed and assessed community succession mechanisms and trends using mathematical modeling or by controlling environmental conditions such as design of environmental gradients [6, 7] The latter approach excludes any human impact and focuses exclusively on the succession of the natural state. A formalized approach for determining successional stages in these studies is lacking, increasing the level of uncertainty in the results
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