Revegetation is the most common procedure in the restoration of disturbed areas; this practice usually aims at reconstructing plant communities that can last without further management. A low‐cost strategy to assist these efforts is the application of ecological knowledge in the design of the restoration. Promoting ecological processes that enhance the functioning of the restored community could result in higher restoration success. Among these processes, plant–plant interactions, e.g., facilitation and competition, can play an important role, both facilitating and impeding the development of a self‐sustaining plant community. Although these processes have been well‐studied in nature, we rarely have sufficient knowledge about the whole plant community. To develop that knowledge, we leverage on a restoration experiment that took place after a mine toxic spill, where ~15,000 woody plants from 13 species were planted and geolocated. Species were planted in three mixtures mimicking natural communities found along soil moisture gradients (xerophyte, intermediate, and hydrophyte). Plantings also varied in density. Approximately 2,600 plants were monitored for damage status, survival, and growth, for 4 yr. We analyzed growth performance of six targeted species as a function of their damage status, planted mixture, and density. Growth was also assessed on the basis of neighboring plants, accounting for the species identity and distance to the focal plant. Results show that survival among planted species was relatively high and was mostly unaffected by mixture or density of the plantings. Only very damaged plants in one species experienced a decrease in survival with increasing density. Neighborhood effects on growth show positive, neutral, and negative interactions among the tested species; these also varied depending on the type of growth performance considered (height, crown area, diameter). The species‐specific results ranged from positive to negative, varying between pair of species and growth performance metric. Results gathered from our neighborhood analyses on plant growth provide valuable information for the design of planting schemes that could enhance the performance of the target species. The methods developed can be applied to other systems and species. Given the potential impacts that facilitation and competition may have during revegetation, these interactions could be considered in restoration operations.

中文翻译：

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了解邻里效应以增加木本植物群落的恢复成功。

植被恢复是恢复受干扰地区最常见的程序；这种做法通常旨在重建无需进一步管理就可以持续的植物群落。协助这些工作的低成本策略是在修复设计中应用生态知识。促进生态过程以增强恢复社区的功能，可以提高恢复成功率。在这些过程中，植物与植物之间的相互作用（例如促进和竞争）可以发挥重要作用，既促进和阻碍了植物群落的自我维持。尽管对这些过程进行了充分的研究，但我们很少了解整个植物群落。为了发展这些知识，我们利用矿井有毒泄漏后进行的修复实验，从该树种种植了约15,000种木本植物并进行了地理位置定位。将物种种植在三种混合物中，这些混合物模仿沿土壤水分梯度发现的自然群落（旱生植物，中间植物和水生植物）。种植密度也不同。监测了大约2600株植物的危害状态，存活率和生长情况，为期4年。我们分析了六个目标物种的生长状况，作为其破坏状态，种植混合物和密度的函数。还根据邻近植物对生长进行了评估，考虑了物种身份和距重点植物的距离。结果表明，种植物种之间的存活率相对较高，并且几乎不受种植混合物或密度的影响。在一个物种中，只有极度受损的植物的存活率随密度增加而降低。邻域对生长的影响显示出被测物种之间的正，中性和负性相互作用。这些也随所考虑的生长性能类型（高度，冠面积，直径）而变化。特定物种的结果范围从正到负，在物种对和生长表现指标之间有所不同。从我们的邻里植物生长分析中收集的结果为种植计划的设计提供了有价值的信息，可以提高目标物种的性能。开发的方法可以应用于其他系统和物种。考虑到疏导和竞争在植被恢复过程中可能产生的潜在影响，可以在恢复作业中考虑这些相互作用。