AI Article Synopsis
- We conducted a field experiment to see how species richness affects ecosystem processes in areas disturbed by fire, focusing on Mediterranean grasslands.
- Results showed that higher species richness increased aboveground biomass production and improved canopy structure after fires, making these diverse communities more resilient compared to species-poor ones.
- While fire enhanced soil nutrients and decomposition rates overall, the composition of species within a community was more important for stabilizing aboveground processes during fire disturbances than the sheer number of species present.
Article Abstract
We conducted a field experiment using constructed communities to test whether species richness contributed to the maintenance of ecosystem processes under fire disturbance. We studied the effects of diversity components (i.e., species richness and species composition) upon productivity, structural traits of vegetation, decomposition rates, and soil nutrients between burnt and unburnt experimental Mediterranean grassland communities. Our results demonstrated that fire and species richness had interactive effects on aboveground biomass production and canopy structure components. Fire increased biomass production of the highest-richness communities. The effects of fire on aboveground biomass production at different levels of species richness were derived from changes in both vertical and horizontal canopy structure of the communities. The most species-rich communities appeared to be more resistant to fire in relation to species-poor ones, due to both compositional and richness effects. Interactive effects of fire and species richness were not important for belowground processes. Decomposition rates increased with species richness, related in part to increased levels of canopy structure traits. Fire increased soil nutrients and long-term decomposition rate. Our results provide evidence that composition within richness levels had often larger effects on the stability of aboveground ecosystem processes in the face of fire disturbance than species richness per se.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-004-0179-6 | DOI Listing |
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