Secondary succession of semi-arid Mediterraneanold-fields in south-eastern Spain: insights for

conservation and restoration of degraded lands

Presented by : Created by: Andreu Bonet

Hafidz Fadilloh

Audia Andarini

Introduction

• In European Mediterranean Basin countries, socio-economic changes in the last decades have led to a dramatic rural exodus and subsequent abandonment of agricultural land

• Cessation of coppicing and diminishing of grazing in natural communities has also occurred

• In consequence, both landscapes and ecological processes have suffered from strong modifications, with marked effects in semi-arid areas

Methode

• Study Area

The study was conducted at the Ventos-Agost Catchment Experimental Station. (University of Alicante), in the Municipality of Agost, Alicante Province, SE Spain

• Sampling

Vegetation analysis was carried out through chronosequence sampling. For practical reasons, many of the Mediterranean secondary succession studies in oldfields have been done using a chronosequence approach instead of diachronic studies.

Data analyses

• These ordinations were performed using logarithmically transformed species percentage cover values and downweighting of rare species.

• Firstly, vegetation data were analysed by DCA with detrending by segments. The ordination was stable because random reordering of the data produced very close site scores

• Hierarchical classification, regression and correlation methods were carried out using SPSS software.

• Input data, yielding a matrix of 96 old-field samples and the 222 species recorded, were analysed by Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) and Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA).

Species richness and functional groups

Species Richnees

Land use history

• From these results it could be inferred that the abandonment process in semi-arid old-fields affects vegetation dynamics in different ways, depending on the land use history and previous crop practices.

• Crop type affects the species cover of some of the most abundant species (Table 4), while other more generalist species are not constrained by previous cropping

Thanks