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Recovery of a plant community in the central Anatolian steppe after small-scale disturbances

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Abstract

How plant communities in Anatolian steppes recover after disturbances has remained unknown. To study the effects of small-scale disturbances on plant communities of the central Anatolian steppe, we established thirty-two plots 1 × 1 m in size in a natural steppe near Ankara (Turkey). The plots were subjected to mowing or hoeing treatments representing low- and high-intensity disturbance, respectively. Some plots were left untreated to serve as the control. The plots were sampled for three consecutive years to investigate changes in species occurrence, cover and biomass under various disturbance frequencies and intensities over time. The vegetation was able to recover within a few months, particularly in the growing season after mowing treatments, but the recovery level of the vegetation was lower after hoeing, especially when it was applied with high frequency. Species richness and cover of annual herbs increased with moderate disturbance frequencies in both disturbance types whereas perennial herbs were negatively affected by the hoeing disturbance, but not by the mowing disturbance. Both types of disturbance had a significant negative effect on plant aboveground biomass in the plots. The results partly support the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. High-level resilience to small-scale disturbances was observed, possibly due to adaptations of Anatolian steppe plants to natural and anthropogenic disturbances.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Golshan Zare, D. Deniz Kazancı, Samet Ekincik, Kürşat Ekincik, Z. Tuğçe Yücens, Enes Işık and S. Nur Erdem for helping the fieldwork, and Can Elverici for laboratory studies. We also thank Jitka Klimešová and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the paper. The identification of plant samples was done at the Hacettepe University Herbarium (HUB). This study was supported by The Rufford Small Grants Foundation (project No. 12078-1). This paper is part of the requirements for the M.Sc. thesis by the first author submitted to Hacettepe University. The experiments we performed in this study comply with the current laws of Turkey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lalahan High School, Ankara, Turkey

    Özlem Özüdoğru

  2. Department of Biology, Hacettepe University, Beytepe, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Özlem Özüdoğru, Barış Özüdoğru & Çağatay Tavşanoğlu

  3. Institute of Science, Hacettepe University, Beytepe, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Özlem Özüdoğru

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  1. Özlem Özüdoğru
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Contributions

Çağatay Tavşanoğlu conceptualized and designed the study. All authors contributed to data collection in the field. Özlem Özüdoğru performed the laboratory work. Barış Özüdoğru identified plant taxa in the herbarium. Özlem Özüdoğru and Barış Özüdoğru prepared laboratory and field data for further analyses. Çağatay Tavşanoğlu analysed the data. Özlem Özüdoğru and Barış Özüdoğru wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors critically contributed to and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Çağatay Tavşanoğlu.

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Özüdoğru, Ö., Özüdoğru, B. & Tavşanoğlu, Ç. Recovery of a plant community in the central Anatolian steppe after small-scale disturbances. Folia Geobot 56, 241–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-021-09404-9

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