Comparison of methods for revegetation of vehicle tracks in High Arctic tundra on Svalbard1

Natural regeneration after anthropogenic disturbance is slow in the tundra biome, but assisted regeneration can help speed up this process. A tracked off-road vehicle damaged a High Arctic dwarf shrub heath in Svalbard in May 2009, drastically reducing the vegetation cover, soil seed banks, and inco...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arctic Science
Main Authors: Magne Neby, Philipp Semenchuk, Erica Neby, Elisabeth J. Cooper
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
French
Published: Canadian Science Publishing 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1139/as-2021-0016
https://doaj.org/article/6604a84d28bb417f8219601eb7835c43
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Summary:Natural regeneration after anthropogenic disturbance is slow in the tundra biome, but assisted regeneration can help speed up this process. A tracked off-road vehicle damaged a High Arctic dwarf shrub heath in Svalbard in May 2009, drastically reducing the vegetation cover, soil seed banks, and incoming seed rain. We assisted regeneration the following year using six different revegetation treatments and monitored their effects one month, and one and eight years after their application. By 2018, all treatments still had lower vegetation cover and limited species composition than the undamaged reference vegetation. The fertiliser treatment was the most effective in restoring vegetation cover (71% vegetation cover, of which 62% were bryophytes and 38% were vascular plant species). Compared to the reference plots (98% vegetation cover, of which 32% were bryophytes and 66% were vascular plant species), the composition of the disturbed vegetation was still far from regenerated to its original state nine years after the tracks were made. The slow regrowth demonstrated in this study underlines the importance of avoiding the disturbance of fragile tundra and implementing and upholding regulations that restrict or ban such disturbances.