The accumulation of anthropogenic stressors induces a progressive shift in the ecological preferences and morphological traits shared by riparian plant communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In riverine ecosystems, human‐induced stressors related to flow regulation and bank stabilisation have accumulated over time. The restoration of these highly anthropised ecosystems has become a major issue over the last few decades, with ambitious stated objectives. However, while the individual impact of flow regulation and channelisation on river functioning has been extensively studied, the response of ecological communities to multiple co‐occurring human‐induced stressors remains largely unexplored. Using a sampling design based on five river reaches in the Rhône catchment, ranging from unregulated in flow and bedload transport to intensively regulated reaches, we sought to understand how the accumulation of anthropogenic stressors influenced the functional response of riparian plants communities on gravel bars. By using 12 ecological and morphological traits, we performed a classification analysis to construct six riparian guilds and investigated whether their representativeness, as well as the mean value of individual traits, varied with increasing levels of anthropogenic stressors. Species cover and redundancy in several guilds increased or decreased significantly with increasing pressures. Thus, the guild of small taproot herbs with low nutrient and soil moisture requirements (xero‐oligotro‐taproot species guild) and the guild of taproot herbs adapted to very bright and dry conditions (mesoxero‐mesotro‐taproot species guild) dominated the unregulated reaches with active bedload transport. Conversely, regulated reaches with stabilised baseflow and inactive transport were dominated by the guild of flood‐tolerant trees (hygro‐perennial tall species guild) and the guild of vegetatively reproducing and flood‐tolerant perennial herbs (hygro‐perennial clonal species guild). Analysis of individual traits revealed a shift in environmental conditions, from full light to shade tolerance and from dry to humid, with increasing anthropogenic stressors. In response to this decrease in drought levels, plants traits shifted from annual to perennial species, from sexual to vegetative strategies and from taproots to a fibrous root system. Our results highlight the accumulated effects that anthropogenic stressors can have on riparian communities, inducing a progressive shift in certain traits related to life history, reproductive strategies, and drought adaptations. This effect on a set of shared traits reveals the strong influence that human infrastructures can have on the ecological niche of species and the morphological adaptations of riparian vegetation. From an applied point of view, and for highly anthropised rivers, our results suggest that restoration actions targeting a single stressor will not be sufficient to reorient riparian plant communities towards an ecological state closer to reference systems. Since human‐induced stressors have often deeply altered the flow and sediment regimes of rivers, a more integrated approach based on the restoration of erosion and flooding processes is essential to allow the expression of a wider diversity of riparian plant communities and habitats.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".