Airoldi, Laura and Billah, Masum MD and Bonato, Marco and Bortolami, Federica and Giomi, Folco and Gopakumar, Anjali and De Battisti, Davide (2025) Multi-site salt marsh restoration can recover key natural functions despite long-term structural deviations and site-level differences. [Data Collection]
Collection description
Restoration studies often focus on short-term structural recovery, while delivering consistent, long-term functional results across multiple locations remains a challenge, limiting their scalability. We sampled multiple restored salt marshes, at least 10 years old, at mid and low shore levels in the Venice Lagoon to evaluate the long-term structural and functional effectiveness (average match to reference natural sites) and outcome consistency (dispersion around the average) of two restoration methods: RC which favours tidal creek development at the low shore, and RB, which does not. At the mid shore, neither method fully replicated the natural sediment characteristics, and site-level differences often exceeded natural levels. Nevertheless, on average, restored vegetation matched the biotic structur and function of natural sites, including biomass, soil carbon and macrofaunal diversity. In contrast, at the low shore, neither method supported the native cordgrass Spartina maritima, despite more natural-like sediment conditions. Only the non-native S. anglica established at the low shore — thriving at RC sites, with biotic and functional traits similar to natural sites, but failing to establish at RB sites. These results suggest that methods restoring natural foreshore dynamics, like RC, better approximate low-shore natural conditions and support vegetation establishment—albeit non-native S. anglica—while RB sites supported none. Moreover, restoring multiple diffuse sites may be more effective than targeting individual locations, as a network of restored sites can, on average, better replicate key natural structural and functional conditions, even in the presence of persistent structural deviations and elevated site-level differences.
| DOI: |  10.25430/researchdata.cab.unipd.it.00001607 |
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| Keywords: | ecosystem structure and function; restoration outcomes; Mediterranean Sea; non-indigenous species; salt marsh; scaling up | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | Life Sciences > Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology: Population, community and ecosystem ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology > Ecosystem and community ecology, macroecology Life Sciences > Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology: Population, community and ecosystem ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology > Marine biology and ecology Life Sciences > Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology: Population, community and ecosystem ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology > Biodiversity, conservation biology, conservation genetics |
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| Department: | Departments > Dipartimento di Biologia (DiBio) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Depositing User: | Davide De Battisti | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 28 Jul 2025 11:09 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 28 Jul 2025 11:09 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Creators/Authors: |
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| Type of data: | Database | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research funder: | (INTERREG V-A Italy-Croatia CBC Programme ID 10255941), PON (Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020, Azione IV.6 “Contratti di ricerca su tematiche Green” DM 1062 del 10/08/2021, National Biodiversity Future Center (CN00000033, Italian MUR under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research project title: | CASCADE, grant 19-G-12540-1, National Recovery and Resilience Plan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Grant number: | 10255941 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Collection period: |
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| Geographic coverage: | Central Venice Lagoon (Italy) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data collection method: | Fieldwork was perfomred in the Venice Lagoon, following publish protocols (see methods section) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data processing and preparation activities: | Mixed-effect modelling using the open sourc software R | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Resource language: | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Metadata language: | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Publisher: | Research Data Unipd | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date: | 28 July 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright holders: | The Author | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| URI: | https://researchdata.cab.unipd.it/id/eprint/1607 |
orcid.org/0000-0001-5046-0871
