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Potential roles of small and linear habitat fragments in satoyama landscapes for conservation of grassland plant species

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Abstract

By comparing with the historic semi-natural grassland and woodland vegetation data compiled in the 1970s and 1980s, we aimed to reveal potential roles of small and linear habitat fragments remaining in the urbanized satoyama landscape (i.e., agricultural landscape) in Japan for conservation of grassland plant species. TWINSPAN cluster analysis differentiated the current vegetation from historic one. Current vegetation of Miscanthus grassland was classified into two different groups and one of the two was equivalent to current understory vegetation of fragmented woodland. The linear woodland edge vegetation along the roads was classified into one group and separated from the other current vegetation groups. The current vegetation groups were characterized by higher richness of exotic species than historic vegetation groups. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) revealed that there were no groups of current vegetation that is equivalent to historic woodland understory vegetation. The vegetation quality of the current group of Miscanthus grassland and secondary woodland remaining on urban public properties, and the group of linear roadside vegetation were almost equivalent to that of historic semi-natural grassland. Both of the small and linear habitat fragments might have functioned as habitats for grassland species under regular mowing management. Although small and linear habitat fragments would not be sufficient for sustaining grassland populations in the future, these habitats can serve as key reservoirs for grassland species recovery in the conservation and restoration of grassland communities in the urbanized satoyama landscape.

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Acknowledgments

We thank K. Fujiwara and T. Fuji, who compiled the regional flora, for providing detailed information on the historic vegetation data. T. Nakamura kindly provided additional historic vegetation data in the study area. We also thank S. Yamada and Y. Tokuoka for helping with vegetation surveys. T. Furukawa kindly edited English and gave us informative comments to improve our manuscript. This study was financially supported by the 21st Century COE Program, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration, with additional support from JSPS research fellowship to T. Koyanagi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, 2-579-15 Mikajima, Tokorozawa, Saitama, 359-1192, Japan

    Tomoyo Koyanagi

  2. Biodiversity Division, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, 3-1-3, Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8604, Japan

    Yoshinobu Kusumoto & Shori Yamamoto

  3. Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S), The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1, Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan

    Kazuhiko Takeuchi

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  1. Tomoyo Koyanagi
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  3. Shori Yamamoto
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  4. Kazuhiko Takeuchi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tomoyo Koyanagi.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 2.

Table 2 List of the typical grassland species recorded in the current and historic vegetation groups
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Appendix 2

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

DCA ordination showing all the vegetation plots of the current and historic vegetation types

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Koyanagi, T., Kusumoto, Y., Yamamoto, S. et al. Potential roles of small and linear habitat fragments in satoyama landscapes for conservation of grassland plant species. Urban Ecosyst 15, 893–909 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-012-0253-4

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