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Relationships between soil seed banks and above-ground vegetation along a disturbance gradient in the W National Park trans-boundary biosphere reserve, West Africa

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Title Relationships between soil seed banks and above-ground vegetation along a disturbance gradient in the W National Park trans-boundary biosphere reserve, West Africa
 
Creator Savadogo, Patrice
 
Contributor Sanou, Lassina
Dayamba, Sidzabda Djibril
Bognounou, Fidèle
Thiombiano, Adjima
 
Subject savanna–woodland restoration
vegetation degradation
seed bank
 
Description Aims
Vegetation succession depends on the availability of suitable propagules
in the soils, thus knowledge of soil seed banks is essential
for formulating effective strategies for restoring the vegetation of
degraded sites. The W National Park, the only trans-boundary biosphere
reserve in West Africa, is being extensively fragmented and
degraded in recent decades. The aims of this study were to assess
the reserve’s soil seed banks, their relationships with standing vegetation
and bundle of disturbances and their potential significance
for vegetation restoration.
Methods
The size and composition of the above-ground species vegetation
were assessed in nine plots of 1 ha each representing a range of
habitats with differing disturbance severity (low, intermediate and
high). A total of 702 soil samples were taken from three layers (0–3,
3–6 and 6–9 cm) and soil seed bank was analyzed using the seedling
emergence technique.
Important Findings
Generally, seeds of non-woody taxa dominated in samples from
all soil depths and habitats of all disturbance severities. The mean
soil seed density was 17.8, 24.4 and 26.3 seeds/dm3 in samples
from the least, intermediate and most disturbed sites, respectively,
and highest in the upper soil layers in all cases. The results indicate
that there is limited potential for restoring woody vegetation
solely from soil seed banks, and that woody species in the region
rely more on recently shed seeds trapped in the standing dead
biomass and litter on the ground than soil seed banks for regeneration.
Thus, human intervention is needed to accelerate forest
recovery, mainly through alleviating anthropogenic impacts on
the ecosystem (for instance, avoiding destruction of new seeds
by intense fire), and site manipulation to improve environmental
conditions for seedling establishment and growth. Other ways
of restoring forests than through the soil seed bank (e.g. sowing
seeds collected elsewhere, and planting tree seedlings) could also
be relevant.
 
Date 2016-06-01
2017-02-09T00:30:19Z
2017-02-09T00:30:19Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/9634
https://mel.cgiar.org/reporting/download/hash/5kWnraoJ
Patrice Savadogo, Lassina Sanou, Sidzabda Djibril Dayamba, Fidèle Bognounou, Adjima Thiombiano. (1/6/2016). Relationships between soil seed banks and above-ground vegetation along a disturbance gradient in the W National Park trans-boundary biosphere reserve, West Africa. pp. 1-15.
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11766/5633
Limited access
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-4.0
 
Format PDF
 
Publisher Oxford University Press (OUP)
 
Source Journal of Plant Ecology;(2016) Pagination 1,15