Green, SM, Baird, AJ orcid.org/0000-0001-8198-3229, Holden, J orcid.org/0000-0002-1108-4831 et al. (3 more authors) (2017) An experimental study on the response of blanket bog vegetation and water tables to ditch blocking. Wetlands Ecology and Management, 25 (6). pp. 703-716. ISSN 0923-4861
Abstract
We studied the effect of ditch blocking on vegetation composition and water-table depths in a blanket peatland. Measurements were made for a period of four years (water tables) and five years (vegetation) in the inter-ditch areas of three experimental treatments: (i) open ditches, (ii) ditches blocked with closely-spaced dams and (iii) ditches partially infilled with peat and blocked with dams. It is often assumed that ditch blocking will lead to an increase in the abundance of Sphagnum and, potentially, a reduction in the abundance of sedges, particularly the cotton grasses. However, our data show no treatment effects on the abundance of either group. We did find an effect of time, with the abundance of both sedges and Sphagnum spp. varying significantly between some years. For the sedges there was no systematic change over time, while for the Sphagnum spp. abundance tended to increase through the study period. This systematic change was not related to a measure of the vigour of the sedges, although vigour was lower towards the end of the study compared to the beginning. Our vegetation data are consistent with our water-table data. As with plant type abundance, we did not find any statistically significant differences in water-table depths between treatments, both for annual averages and summer averages. We comment on why ditch blocking does not seem to have affected water tables and vegetation composition at our study site.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Blanket peatland; Re-wetting; Vegetation response; Cotton grass (Eriophorum vaginatum); Sphagnum; Hydrological response |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Apr 2017 13:57 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 22:28 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11273-017-9545-z |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:115670 |