Changes in the moss layer in Czech fens indicate earlysuccession triggered by nutrient enrichment
2015
Temperate fens are rapidly losing their specialized species.
This applies even to seemingly untouched fens, in which the
moss layer in particular is undergoing rapid succession.We
analysed historical and recent vegetation-plot data from fens
in the agricultural landscape on the Bohemian Massif (Czech
Republic) to test the hypotheses that (i) more acidicolous
and/or competitively stronger species that benefit from
increased nutrient availability regionally increase in
frequency and in percentage cover, and (ii) these competitively
stronger bryophytes have become more tolerant of high pH
because of the increased nutrient supply.We worked with two
datasets: a precise dataset (themost similar pairs of samples
from the same fens) and a large dataset (all of the historical
and recent samples from the area studied). We found that
calcicolous brown mosses specialized for growing in fens have
recently been retreating to places with the highest pH, being
replaced by more nutrient-demanding species such as
Calliergonella cuspidata, Sphagnum palustre, S. teres and
Straminergon stramineum in most of rich fens. Sphagnum fallax
and S. flexuosum spread only in poor fens. At the level of
individual species, the intensity of change in species
abundance (cover-weighted frequency change) correlated
significantly with the median potassium concentration in the
biomass of species based on a large set of recent data.We
conclude that nature conservancy authorities should monitor
changes in the species composition of the moss layer as thismay
signal the initial phase of nutrient enrichment of seemingly
intact fens in agricultural landscapes.
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