The Impact of Fine-Scale Present and Historical Land Cover on Plant Diversity in Central European National Parks with Heterogeneous Landscapes

Abstract

As the human population grows, the transformation of landscapes for human uses increases. In recent homogeneous and predominantly agricultural landscapes, land-cover and management changes are considered the main drivers of vascular plant diversity. However, the specific effects of land-cover classes across whole heterogeneous landscapes are still insufficiently explored. Here, we investigated two floristic surveys realised in 1997 and 2021, accompanied by fine-scale land-cover classes detected in 1950, 1999 and 2018, to reveal the impact of historical and present land cover on the pattern of species composition and species richness in the bilateral Podyjí and Thayatal National Parks. Multi-dimensional analyses revealed that the species composition was driven by the fine-scale historical land cover, the overall species richness was mostly affected by the river phenomenon and the present richness was mostly affected by increased soil nutrients. In well-preserved protected areas, it is especially desirable to restore disappearing land-cover classes with traditional or compensatory management to retain plant species richness, which is a key factor of biodiversity. However, management plans should also take into account the increasing amount of nitrogen in soils from long-term continual deposition, which can strongly impact the species richness, even in national parks with low current deposition.