Abstract
The effects of local and regional environmental variables as well as spatial gradients on the plant species composition of two types of alder-dominated forests (riparian forests and alder carrs) with contrasting connectivity were studied across the Western Carpathians from Hungary through Slovakia to Poland. We used large vegetation (240 sampling plots) and environmental (24 variables) datasets, which were accompanied by spatial variables represented by principal coordinates of neighbour matrices. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) of the two datasets revealed 13 and 29 variables with significant effects on variation in species composition of alder carrs and riparian alder forests, which jointly explained 41.2% and 36.4% of the variability, respectively. Altitude was the most important factor explaining 7.7% of the variability in the species composition of alder carrs and 8.2% in riparian alder forests. Variation partitioning in CCA revealed that local variables were crucial drivers for species composition patterns in alder carrs, while spatial processes unrelated to the measured environmental variables shaped the vegetation structure of riparian forests.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank A. Petrášová (Banská Bystrica) for the identification of mosses. The research was supported by the Science Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Academy of Sciences (VEGA 2/0016/19 and 2/0119/19) and by the Operation Programme Research and Innovation (NFP: 313010T721).
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Appendices
Appendix 1
See Table 3.
Appendix 2
See Fig. 4.
Example of PCNM eigenvectors with high (PCNM1), intermediate (PCNM10) and low eigenvalues (PCNM20) derived from alder carrs (upper row) and riparian forests data (bottom row). The size of the circles is proportional to the PCNM values, and the colour represents the sign (black—positive values, red—negative values)
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Hrivnák, R., Svitok, M., Kochjarová, J. et al. Drivers of plant species composition in alder-dominated forests with contrasting connectivity. Wetlands Ecol Manage 28, 137–150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-019-09700-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-019-09700-4