The wild flora biodiversity in pesticide free bufferzones along old hedgerows

摘要

The natural field margin ecotone from the field border and into a cropped field hosts a diversity of plant species. In conventional cropped fields, biodiversity suffers from fertilizer and pesticide application. In our study at Danish conventional spring-barley fields, we laid out bufferzones with no pesticide application spraying after sowing, with the widths: 24,12,6 and 4 m (and control) to the field edge hedgerow. Through one season: plant species number, biodiversity and evenness for each bufferzone at the distances: 18,9,5,2and0m from the hedgerow were significantly affected by distance to the hedge and by width of bufferzone. The bufferzones affected: species number (total of 92 weed species), species diversity (1.27 to 0.44) and species evenness index (0.63 to 0.87), and revealed that the bufferzone of 24 m gave the largest improvement of the field margin for plants. Decreasing the bufferzone widths provided smaller biodiversity and larger evenness of plants at distances larger than the buffer width: the distance at which diversity (Shannons) was reduced by half the difference between hedge- and field diversity was 1.2,3.1,6.7,10.8 and 10.9 m in bufferwidth treatments of 0,4,6,12 and 24 m; likewise, the half-way distance for Smiths and Wilsons evenness index was 1.2,1.7, 5.4,14.0 and 30.2 m in the bufferwidth treatments of 0,4,6,12 and 24 m. Based on modelled diversity and evenness indexes a positive effect of buffer was evident from 6 m bufferzone. The average diversity over the distances from 0 to 18 m was 0.66,0.75,0.98,1.14 and 1.11 in bufferwidth treatments of 0,4,6,12 and 24 m and the average evenness over the distances from 0 to 18 m was 0.82, 0.80, 0.74, 0.66 and 0.63, in bufferwidth treatments of 0,4,6,12 and 24 m. Furthermore, the accumulated number of species revealed that a bufferzone width of at least 6 m was needed to significantly increase the species richness at all distances between 2 and 18 m. At 18 m distance, the accumulated number of species was 37.1,39.7,41.2,42.4 and 42.7 in bufferwidth treatments of 0,4,6,12 and 24 m.