Comparison of methods for revegetation of vehicle tracks in High Arctic tundra on Svalbard.

Natural regeneration after anthropogenic disturbance is slow in the tundra biome, but assisted regeneration can help speed up this process. A tracked off-road vehicle damaged a High Arctic dwarf shrub heath in Svalbard in May 2009, drastically reducing the vegetation cover, soil seed banks, and incoming seed rain. We assisted regeneration the following year using six different revegetation treatments and monitored their effects one month, and one and eight years after their application. By 2018, all treatments still had lower vegetation cover and limited species composition than the undamaged reference vegetation. The fertiliser treatment was the most effective in restoring vegetation cover (71% vegetation cover, of which 62% were bryophytes and 38% were vascular plant species). Compared to the reference plots (98% vegetation cover, of which 32% were bryophytes and 66% were vascular plant species), the composition of the disturbed vegetation was still far from regenerated to its original state nine years after the tracks were made. The slow regrowth demonstrated in this study underlines the importance of avoiding the disturbance of fragile tundra and implementing and upholding regulations that restrict or ban such disturbances. ; La régénération naturelle après une perturbation anthropique est lente dans le biome de la toundra, mais la régénération assistée peut aider à accélérer le processus. Un véhicule tout-terrain à chenilles a endommagé une lande d’arbustes nains du Haut-Arctique au Svalbard en mai 2009, réduisant considérablement la couverture végétale, la banque de graines du sol et la dispersion aérienne des graines à venir. Les auteurs ont assisté la régénération l’année suivante en utilisant six traitements de revégétalisation différents et suivi leurs effets un mois, puis un et huit ans après leur application. En 2018, la couverture végétale était toujours inférieure et la composition en espèce, limitée, par rapport à la végétation de référence non endommagée, malgré les différents traitements. Le ...