Columbia Environmental Research Center, US Geological Survey, Columbia, Missouri, USA.
Integr Environ Assess Manag. 2024 Nov;20(6):1917-1938. doi: 10.1002/ieam.4993. Epub 2024 Sep 27.
Vegetation communities in restored bottomland hardwood forests in northeast Indiana were studied 6-21 years after restoration to assess progress toward restoration objectives. The study focused on four sites that were restored to compensate for resource injuries after contaminant releases. The restored sites were compared with four reference-site conditions, including crops (prerestoration condition), old field communities representing a no-management alternative, locally sampled second-growth mature forests, and forest community types described by the US National Vegetation Classification (USNVC), which represent ideal or defining conditions of recognized vegetation communities. Fixed-area plots provided data on field-sampled environmental variables, vegetation, soil, and hydrological conditions for crops, old fields, restored areas, and mature forests. The USNVC database provided quantitative data for three historically and geographically relevant reference forest community types for comparison with the sampled communities. Results of nonmetric multidimensional scaling based on species cover revealed clear gradients relating to site age and canopy development. Along those gradients, restored areas demonstrated increasing similarity to mature forest reference communities in terms of floristic composition. Specifically, the floristic quality of restored areas was significantly greater than that of crops and old fields. Furthermore, soil health measurements of physical, chemical, and hydrological conditions indicated significant improvements in restored site soils compared with prerestoration conditions represented by cropland soils. Descriptions and data from the USNVC provided ecological context for restoration target conditions and facilitated the assessment of restoration recovery along a trajectory from starting conditions to those target conditions. Descriptions by USNVC also helped identify deviations from the intended restoration objectives (e.g., invasive species recruitment) and potential adaptive management actions to return sites to their intended trajectories. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2024;20:1917-1938. Published 2024. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).
在印第安纳州东北部，对恢复后的底层硬木林地的植被群落进行了研究，这些林地在恢复后 6 至 21 年进行了评估，以评估其恢复目标的进展情况。该研究集中在四个因污染物释放而导致资源受损后进行修复的地点。将这些恢复后的地点与四个参考地点条件进行了比较，包括作物（恢复前的条件）、代表无管理替代方案的旧农田群落、本地取样的次生成熟林，以及美国国家植被分类（USNVC）描述的森林群落类型，这些类型代表了公认的植被群落的理想或定义条件。固定面积的样地提供了有关作物、旧农田、恢复区和成熟林的实地采样环境变量、植被、土壤和水文条件的数据。USNVC 数据库提供了与采样群落相关的三个具有历史和地理相关性的参考森林群落类型的定量数据。基于物种覆盖的非度量多维标度分析结果显示，与地点年龄和冠层发育相关的梯度明显。沿着这些梯度，恢复区在植物区系组成方面与成熟林参考群落的相似性逐渐增加。具体而言，恢复区的植物区系质量明显大于作物和旧农田。此外，土壤健康测量的物理、化学和水文条件表明，与农田土壤代表的恢复前条件相比，恢复区土壤的健康状况有了显著改善。USNVC 的描述和数据为恢复目标条件提供了生态背景，并有助于沿着从起始条件到目标条件的轨迹评估恢复恢复情况。USNVC 的描述还有助于确定偏离预期恢复目标的情况（例如，入侵物种的招募）和可能采取的适应性管理措施，以使这些地点恢复到预期的轨迹。《综合环境评估与管理》2024 年；20：1917-1938。2024 年出版。本文是美国政府的一项工作，在美国属于公有领域。环境毒理学与化学学会（SETAC）旗下威利期刊出版公司出版的《综合环境评估与管理》。
