Soil seed banks and vegetation recovery on dolomite hills in Hungary

摘要: The regeneration characteristics of dolomite grasslands were studied. Greenhouse germination tests of soil samples collected from Pinus nigra stands planted on the dolomite slopes showed that the seed bank of the dolomite grassland becomes very poor in the long run. Only a few species (e.g. Carex humilis, Teucrium montanum, Campanula sibirica) maintained a seed bank for decades. The postfire regeneration of grassland vegetation was studied using permanent quadrats in a 0.6-km2 burnt Pinus nigra stand surrounded by intact pine forests. The extremely sparse vegetation cover (below 2%) in the first year after the fire indicated both the low number of viable seeds in the soil and the lack of sufficient seed rain. By the second year, vegetation cover increased by 15-45 times. Successional species contributed to this change 6-7 times more than the grassland species. Conyza canadensis was the main …