Grassland restoration is gaining momentum worldwide to tackle the loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Restoration methods and their effects on ecological community reassembly have been extensively studied across various grassland types, while the importance of post-restoration management has so far received less attention. Grassland management is an important surrogate for natural disturbances, with which most ancient grasslands have coevolved. Thus, without the reintroduction of management-related disturbance, restoration targets are unlikely to be achieved in restored grasslands. In this study, we aimed to explore how 20 yr of management by mowing once a year or light cattle grazing affects restoration success in Palearctic meadow-steppe grasslands restored by either sowing native grasses (sown sites), applying Medicago sativa as a nurse plant (Medicago sites), or allowing spontaneous succession (spontaneous sites). We found that, following mowing, sown sites maintained long-lasting establishment limitation, while Medicago sites experienced a delay in succession. These limitations resulted in low total and target species richness, low functional redundancy, and distinct species and functional composition compared to reference data from ancient grasslands. Spontaneous sites that were mowed reached a more advanced successional stage, although they did not reach reference levels regarding most vegetation descriptors. Sown and Medicago sites that were grazed had higher total and target species richness than those that were mowed, and showed restoration success similar to that of spontaneous sites, on which grazing had only moderate further positive effects. Grazed sites, irrespective of the restoration method, were uniformly species rich, functionally diverse, and functionally redundant, and thus became important biodiverse habitats with considerable resilience. We conclude that an optimally chosen post-restoration management may have an impact on long-term community reassembly comparable to the choice of restoration method. Restoration planners may, therefore, need to put more emphasis on future management than on the initial restoration method. However, our findings also imply that if local constraints, such as potentially high invasive propagule pressure, necessitate the application of restoration methods that could also hinder the establishment of target species, the long-term recovery of the grassland can still be ensured by wisely chosen post-restoration management.

中文翻译：

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在繁殖体丰富的景观中，恢复后的草地管理超越了恢复方法的影响


为了解决生物多样性和相关生态系统服务的丧失问题，草原恢复正在全球范围内蓬勃发展。各种草地类型的恢复方法及其对生态群落重组的影响已被广泛研究，而恢复后管理的重要性迄今为止受到的关注较少。草原管理是自然干扰的重要替代因素，大多数古代草原都与自然干扰共同进化。因此，如果不重新引入与管理相关的干扰，恢复的草原就不可能实现恢复目标。在这项研究中，我们的目的是探讨每年一次割草或轻度放牧的 20 年管理如何影响古北界草甸草原草原的恢复成功，这些草原通过播种原生草（播种地）、使用紫花苜蓿作为护理植物（苜蓿位点），或允许自发演替（自发位点）。我们发现，割草后，播种地点保持了长期的建立限制，而苜蓿地点则经历了连续性的延迟。与古代草原的参考数据相比，这些限制导致总物种和目标物种丰富度较低、功能冗余度较低以及物种和功能组成不同。自发修剪的地点达到了更高级的演替阶段，尽管它们没有达到大多数植被描述符的参考水平。放牧的播种地和苜蓿地比割草地具有更高的总物种丰富度和目标物种丰富度，并且显示出与自发地相似的恢复成功率，而放牧对自发地仅产生适度的进一步积极影响。 无论采用哪种恢复方法，放牧地都物种丰富、功能多样且功能冗余，因此成为具有相当恢复力的重要生物多样性栖息地。我们的结论是，与恢复方法的选择相比，最佳选择的恢复后管理可能会对长期群落重组产生影响。因此，恢复规划者可能需要更加重视未来的管理而不是最初的恢复方法。然而，我们的研究结果还表明，如果当地的限制，例如潜在的高入侵繁殖压力，需要采用也可能阻碍目标物种建立的恢复方法，那么通过明智的选择，仍然可以确保草原的长期恢复恢复后管理。