Abstract
Long-term data sets documenting temporal changes in vegetation communities are uncommon, yet imperative for understanding trends and triggering potential conservation management interventions. For example, decreasing species diversity and increasing non-native species abundance may be indicative of decreasing community stability. We explored long-term plant community change over a 40-year period through the contribution of data collected in 2019 to two historical datasets collected in 1979 and 1999 to evaluate decadal changes in plant community biodiversity in a tidal freshwater marsh in the Fraser River Estuary in British Columbia, Canada. We found that plant assemblages were characterized by similar indicator species, but most other indicator species changed, and that overall α-diversity decreased while β-diversity increased. Further, we found evidence for plant assemblage homogenization through the increased abundance of invasive species such as yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus), and reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea). These observations may inform concepts of habitat stability in the absence of direct anthropogenic disturbance, and corroborate globally observed trends of native species loss and non-native species encroachment. Our results indicate that within the Fraser River Estuary, active threat management may be necessary in areas of conservation concern in order to prevent further native species biodiversity loss.
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Data Availability
Data and code for all years of observation are available on GitHub (https://github.com/stefanielane/CommunityStability.git), or via Dryad (https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.r7sqv9sh8).
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Z. Davis for providing R programming support, to P. Roper for 2019 field assistance, and to B. Staines (Ladner Harbour Authority) who provided canoe and harbor access for all field navigation. We thank J. S. Richardson for advising on the 2019 data collection methodologies. We are grateful to M. O’Connor and D. Stewart for providing comprehensive reviews of this manuscript. Research site access was granted by The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.
Funding
Financial support for 2019 field surveys was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant RGPIN-2018–03838 to John S. Richardson (University of British Columbia). Analysis and manuscript writing were supported by Liber Ero Chair in Conservation to Tara G. Martin, and a Mitacs Accelerate Fellowship to Stefanie L. Lane.
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Study conception, 2019 data collection, analysis, and interpretation were undertaken by Stefanie L. Lane. Gary E. Bradfield oversaw original study design and publication (Bradfield and Porter 1982), and advised on sampling and data analysis in this study. Madlen Denoth contributed data collected in 1999. Nancy Shackelford assisted with theoretical framework and manuscript revision. Manuscript was drafted by Stefanie L. Lane; Gary E. Bradfield, Nancy Shackelford, and Tara G. Martin participated in draft revisions on previous versions of this manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Lane, S.L., Shackelford, N., Bradfield, G.E. et al. Plant Community Stability over 40 Years in a Fraser River Estuary Tidal Freshwater Marsh. Wetlands 44, 25 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-024-01776-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-024-01776-w