Characteristics of novel urban vegetation in two Portuguese urban regions

Estêvao Portela-Pereira, Carlos Neto, Eduardo Brito-Henriques, Ana Luísa Soares and Sónia Talhé Azambuja

Landscape Research, 2022, vol. 47, issue 3, 354-369

Abstract: Urban novel ecosystems were sampled across vacant sites in two Portuguese urban regions. The flora were studied with a focus on species’ origin, life form, ecological, chorological and naturalisation types. A multivariate constrained ordination technique was used to identify relationships between plant composition and environmental factors. The vegetation of the two urban regions shows differences, highlighting biome influence, as well as due to climatic variables and (to a lesser degree) soil characteristics and lithology. Although native species are clearly dominant, the frequency of non-native species is high and most are potentially or effectively invasive. In the ecological spectrum, the dominance of opportunistic ruderal species suggests a risk of biotic homogenisation in these ecosystems, which is also noticeable in the analysis of life form, but less in chorological and nativeness spectra. Portuguese novel urban ecosystems are, therefore, simultaneously an opportunity, since spontaneous vegetation management is more cost effective and can bring wilderness to cities; and a hazard, because invasive species must be controlled to support biodiversity conservation efforts.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01426397.2022.2039107 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:clarxx:v:47:y:2022:i:3:p:354-369

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/clar20

DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2022.2039107

Access Statistics for this article

Landscape Research is currently edited by Dr Anna Jorgensen

More articles in Landscape Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().