Effect of Urbanization on Vegetation in Riparian Area: Plant Communities in Artificial and Semi-Natural Habitats

Abstract

Riparian areas are local hot spots of biodiversity that are vulnerable and easily degraded. Comparing plant communities in habitats with different degrees of urbanization may provide valuable information for the management and restoration of these vulnerable habitats. In this study, we explored the impact of urbanization on vegetation communities between artificial and semi-natural habitats within two rivers with different levels of development. We compared species richness, types of vegetation, and composition patterns of the plants in our study. In artificial habitats, the sites with relatively high levels of urbanization had the highest species richness, while in semi-natural habitats, the highest species richness was recorded in the less urbanized sites. Furthermore, every component of urbanization that contributed to the variation of species richness was examined in the current study. In artificial habitats, the proportion of impervious surface was the strongest predictor of the variation in species richness and was associated with the richness of alien, native, and riparian species. In semi-natural habitats, most of the richness of alien and native species were associated with the distance to the city center, and the number of riparian and ruderal species was significantly related to the proportion of impervious surface. Moreover, we found that a high level of urbanization was always associated with a large abundance of alien and ruderal species in both artificial and in semi-natural habitats. We recommend the methods of pair comparison of multiple rivers to analyze the impact of urbanization on plant species in riparian areas and have suggested various management actions for maintaining biodiversity and sustainability in riparian ecosystems.

Can Constructed Wetlands be Wildlife Refuges? A Review of Their Potential Biodiversity Conservation Value

“…Low-level management approaches, such as regular dredging or harvesting, are required to maintain the purification function of CWs [46,47]. These actions are considered to cause intermediate disturbances to ecosystems, which could also promote biodiversity through the regulation of the dominant species [48,49].…”

Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Urban Development

“…This indicates that an influx of non-native propagules from both urban and rural sources contributes to alien tree invasions in these riparian forests. In a study of shrubs and herbs in two riparian systems in Japan, Cao and Natuhara [18] found that species richness was higher in more urbanized sites in parks, mostly due to the presence of exotic and ruderal species, but higher in more rural sites in semi-natural wastelands. In combination, these papers on biological invasions as a pressure on urban biodiversity demonstrate the need for context-dependent assessments, as different patterns are found in different regions, study systems and taxonomic groups.…”

“…This Special Issue covers a broad geographical range, with contributions from Africa [17], Asia [18][19][20], Australia [21,22], Europe [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and North America [31][32][33]. It explores a range of ecosystems in the urban realm, spans natural remnants such as forests [30,32], wetlands [18,21], and natural grasslands [17,22], traditional urban greenspaces including cemeteries [33], gardens [29,31], and, finally, novel urban ecosystems such as green roofs and constructed wetlands [20,26], built-up areas [23], railway bridges [24] and emerging forests on vacant land [27]. In combination, a wide range of socio-cultural and environmental settings are explored and discussed.…”

“…Several papers explore biodiversity in relation to diverse features of urban environments and address a range of animal groups [21,24,27,31,33] and plants [17,18,20,22,27,30,32], including some multi-taxa studies [24,26,27]. Other papers explicitly address urban environments as socio-ecological systems [19,22,25], or further methodological approaches in understanding the people-nature intersection in cities [23,28,29].…”

Assessing Riparian Areas of Greece—An Overview

“…These activities eliminate or substantially decrease the other ecosystems services they offer such as water quality, wildlife habitat, flood protection, ground water recharge etc. In addition, another major threat is urbanization [14][15][16]. More and more people are congregating in cities and towns that are typically located along rivers and deltas.…”