Search results for " Alien species"
showing 3 items of 33 documents
Vegetation dynamics within afforested coastal areas: regeneration by native species or invasion by alien species?
2017
During the last century, massive reforestation projects along the dunes of the southern Sicily have been carried out. Such interventions, far from being in line with the current trends of close-to-nature silviculture, are, however, particularly interesting to assess the vegetation dynamics in afforestation areas. Furthermore, these kind of interventions may determine two opposite effects, that is renaturalization by native woody species or invasion by alien species. Acacia spp. are among the most widespread and prominent invaders within Mediterranean-climate areas, where they have already shown the capability to deeply change the characters and the functioning of native ecosystems. For inst…
The impact of alien vascular plants in the aquatic habitats of a mediterranean island: preliminary data and observations in Sicily
2016
As is well known, invasive alien species pose a major global threat to the conservation of biodiversity, causing the extinction of native species and modifying ecosystem functions: this is true also for aquatic habitats, particularly susceptible to invasion due to usually high disturbance regimes and easy dispersal of propagules. The island of Sicily is one of the main hotspots of plant biodiversity, in the center of the Mediterranean basin; it hosts different types of freshwater habitats, both lentic (coastal wetlands, saltworks, temporary ponds, lakes, reservoirs) and lotic (springs, streams, permanent and seasonal rivers). As a first step of our analysis of the effects of the alien vascu…
Tree invasions in Italian forests
2022
Many forest tree species have been moved outside their native range to provide goods and services elsewhere, but some of them have become invasive, causing negative impacts on biodiversity and human activities. The assessment and knowledge on the degree and scale to which forest ecosystems are invaded by non-native trees is of paramount importance for tailored policies and strategies aiming at forest conservation. By analyzing main databases and literature and applying a four-level scale of invasion (not currently invaded and with low invasibility; potentially invasible; moderately invaded; massively invaded), we assessed the current and potential occurrence of twenty-five invasive non-nati…