Agricultural intensification reduces plant taxonomic and functional diversity across European arable systems - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Functional Ecology Année : 2020

Agricultural intensification reduces plant taxonomic and functional diversity across European arable systems

Résumé

Agricultural intensification is one of the main drivers of species loss worldwide, but there is still a lack of information about its effect on functional diversity of arable weed communities. Using a large-scale pan European study including 786 fields within 261 farms from eight countries, we analysed differences in the taxonomic and functional diversity of arable weeds assemblages across different levels of agricultural intensification. We estimated weed species frequency in each field, and collected species' traits (vegetative height, SLA and seed mass) from the TRY plant trait database. With this information, we estimated taxonomic (species richness), functional composition (community weighted means) and functional diversity (functional richness, evenness, divergence and redundancy). We used indicators of agricultural management intensity at the individual field scale (e.g. yield, inputs of nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides, frequency of mechanical weed control practices) and at the landscape scale surrounding the field (i.e. number of crop types, mean field size and proportion of arable land cover within a radius of 500 m from the sampling points). The effects of agricultural intensification on species and functional richness at the field scale were stronger than those of intensification at the landscape scale, and we did not observe evidence of interacting effects between the two scales. Overall, assemblages in more intensified areas had fewer species, a higher prevalence of species with ruderal strategies (low stature, high leaf area, light seeds), and lower functional redundancy. Maintaining the diversity of Europe's arable weed communities requires some simple management interventions, for example, reducing the high intensity of field-level agricultural management across Europe, which could be complemented by interventions that increase landscape complexity.
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Dates et versions

hal-02867864 , version 1 (20-08-2024)

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Carlos Carmona, Irene Guerrero, Begoña Peco, Manuel B. Morales, Juan Oñate, et al.. Agricultural intensification reduces plant taxonomic and functional diversity across European arable systems. Functional Ecology, 2020, 34 (7), pp.1448-1460. ⟨10.1111/1365-2435.13608⟩. ⟨hal-02867864⟩
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