It is reasonable to treat sampling data of plants along long established roads. However, when I surveyed the vegetation along Tibetan raiway in China, which was constructed in 2004, I am not sure whether the vegetation close to the railway should be regarded as a plant community. Although we have repeatedly surveyed the vegetation in a 4-year interval in order to monitor the species change as time goes, I am now trying hard to figure out how to deal with the sampling data to make a story. Would any one have ideas how to deal with situation? Any related tips or intention to colaboration is welcomed. Thanks a lot.
Best wishes,
Jingming
Of course. E.g. read the plant community definition of Van der Maarel in (van der Maarel, Vegetation Ecology, 2004).
I see no reason why these plant assemblages can't be considered "real" communities. There have been numerous papers published on the subject of plant communities associated with such transportation networks. Your data could provide some insights into the role of railways and their associated impacts in the synanthropisation of vegetation in your region. Transportation networks have also been highlighted as possible dispersal corridors for alien plant species, so addressing that question could add another dimension to your study. It would also be important to consider the effect of any management practices along the railway on the vegetation, e.g. frequent mowing of adjacent vegetation or treatment of weeds with herbicide, and how this has contributed to the plant assemblage you have observed.
by "real community" I mean generally a community was composed of species with common history in a long time, and there are evident links among them as time passed. it seems to me the possiblely unstable species composition in a newly disturbed small area (trips along the railway) do not make these plant assemblage such properties....
Perhaps a lot of trail and error waiting ahead to me before find a good idea. could any one help me with some paper list? I read all i can find but still very limited information available.
I agree with Peter Hargreaves that "Measuring vegetation dynamics is full of difficulties for the unwary" , with hundreds of plots data, the pattern seemed messy....."one-dimensional analysis of spatial distribution" maybe a good tip, I need to find out some plausible method.
thanks
Plant assemblage along the transport road have to be considered as community. Since this region is regularly disturbed by similar kind of activities change in community is not rapid as you expected.
That would be a ruderal plant community. There's a substantial amount of literature on the topic.
thankgs very much, Mr. Jeffrey W. Matthews. I would like to follow you in ResearchGate
Where a road is lined by a fence, you often see a marked difference between vegetation inside and outside the fence. Both are “real” plant communities. The question is which side of the fence is more natural as both sides are influenced by different factors such as agricultural practices or grazing (outside) and lead and CO2 pollution or alien transport (inside).
I would also suggest to analyze your community by family groups. Because, sometimes when you have a big quantity of plots you cannot see a clear pattern. But when you analyse per family is easier to look out what happen.
Look for this paper of Kessler:
Kessler, M. (2000). Elevational gradients in species richness and endemism of selected plant groups in the central Bolivian Andes, 181–193.
Article Elevational gradients in species richness and endemism of se...
in addition of the suggested by Jorge, I recomend to also explore if any pattern about exotic vs native plants emerge in the sequence of four years. really you have good data amount, and I think would be treated as comunities of disturbed or man_altered sites, etc. You also could investigate for some pattern of pionner plants vs competitive plants, etc.
Roads and railways can be altered light and soil compaction.For this reason, samples of these areas may not be representative of the original population.Tolerant trees grow in this region.
Does "real community" mean a community existing naturally? If so, than roadside communities are semi-natural (existing while those roads are maintained), but they are as real as any other community.
by real community, I really mean the microclimate and plant composition will change gradually with the distance away from the railway, generally the composition of nearst plots may be significantly different from community from landscape context, but the influenced vegetation strip is only a few meters wide(at least in grassland traffic corridors), it is hard to say these small areas are distinct new community.
well, i agree that if it is not a real community then what else we can call it? however, when you consider vegetation cluaster or vegetation classification in a large spatial scale, we dont think they are communities, do we? meanwhile, from a practical aspect, we would like to focus on the imediate rehibilitation of them as a part of traffic corridor mangagement plan. so I guess it is better to regard this as a fast changing semi-natural community, and only could be analysed as sites in a small temperal scale.
what do you think?
Yes, I think it is good to bear in mind that this is semi-natural or man-made (on purpose or as a colateral) or secondary vegetation and once this influence/impacts from man will disappear it will start to change fast. It is not fcertain, however, that they will go back to their "natural", pre-disturbance state unless there is such vegetation on adjacent areas.
Road and railway verges are often refugia for intact communities that have been altered or substantially transformed on the other side of the fence (by agriculture, grazing or urban development). So it depends on how wide the road servitude is and how far out from the road itself the impact on the adjacent community is felt. Of course, in much of southern Africa road and railway reserves are fenced, which may not be applicable in your case. But there's a rich literature examining fenceline contrasts between relatively undisturbed land along roads and railways with adjacent disturbed land.
So perhaps your question is relative - if the vegetation outside the road/railway reserve is untransformed, then the community alongside the road is less representative of the surrounding landscape. But if the vegetation outside the servitudes is subtantially transformed (or likely to be so) then your road reserve is a valuable source of information on the plant community.
However, in many cases, road reserves can be more degraded than surrounding vegetation. In large parts of Africa, areas closest to roads are heavily grazed by livestock, for example, simply because of accessibility and proximity to homesteads. And roads can be corridors of invasion for many invasive plant species, particularly where the road verge has been disturbed by construction equipment. Fences themselves might protect the road from grazing, but provide nodes for propogation of bird-distributed alien plants (in parts of South Africa, american bramble is prevalent along fencelines, simply because fences are favoured perches for birds in grasslands).
https://sites.lifesci.ucla.edu/eeb-kraft/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2016/01/Kraft_Ackerly_2014_assembly_chapter.pdf
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