High-Resolution Transect Sampling and Multiple Scale Diversity Analyses for Evaluating Grassland Resilience to Climatic Extremes
Sándor Bartha,
Gábor Szabó,
Sándor Csete,
Dragica Purger,
Judit Házi,
András István Csathó,
Giandiego Campetella,
Roberto Canullo,
Stefano Chelli,
James Lee Tsakalos,
Gábor Ónodi,
György Kröel-Dulay,
Zita Zimmermann
Affiliations
Sándor Bartha
Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Alkotmány út 2-4, H-2163 Vácrátót, Hungary
Gábor Szabó
Institute of Botany and Ecophysiology, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Páter Károly utca 1, H-2100 Gödöllő, Hungary
Sándor Csete
Institute for Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Guba Sándor utca 40, H-7400 Kaposvár, Hungary
Dragica Purger
Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Pécs, Rókus utca 2, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary
Judit Házi
Department of Botany, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest, Rottenbiller utca 50, H-1077 Budapest, Hungary
András István Csathó
Independent Researcher, H-5830 Battonya, Hungary
Giandiego Campetella
Plant Diversity and Ecosystems Management Unit, School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Via Pontoni 5, I-62032 Camerino, MC, Italy
Roberto Canullo
Plant Diversity and Ecosystems Management Unit, School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Via Pontoni 5, I-62032 Camerino, MC, Italy
Stefano Chelli
Plant Diversity and Ecosystems Management Unit, School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Via Pontoni 5, I-62032 Camerino, MC, Italy
James Lee Tsakalos
Plant Diversity and Ecosystems Management Unit, School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Via Pontoni 5, I-62032 Camerino, MC, Italy
Gábor Ónodi
Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Alkotmány út 2-4, H-2163 Vácrátót, Hungary
György Kröel-Dulay
Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Alkotmány út 2-4, H-2163 Vácrátót, Hungary
Zita Zimmermann
Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Alkotmány út 2-4, H-2163 Vácrátót, Hungary
Diversity responses to climatic factors in plant communities are well understood from experiments, but less known in natural conditions due to the rarity of appropriate long-term observational data. In this paper, we use long-term transect data sampled annually in three natural grasslands of different species pools, soils, landscape contexts and land use histories. Analyzing these specific belt transect data of contiguous small sampling units enabled us to explore scale dependence and spatial synchrony of diversity patterns within and among sites. The 14-year study period covered several droughts, including one extreme event between 2011 and 2012. We demonstrated that all natural grasslands responded to droughts by considerable fluctuations of diversity, but, overall, they remained stable. The plant functional group of annuals showed high resilience at all sites, while perennials were resistant to droughts. Our results were robust to changing spatial scales of observations, and we also demonstrated that within-site spatial synchrony could be used as a sensitive indicator of external climatic effects. We propose the broad application of high-resolution belt transects for powerful and adaptive vegetation monitoring in the future.
