School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-10-2025
Abstract
The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas is a biodiversity hotspot due to its high alpha, beta, and gamma diversity and high regional endemism, which are at high risk of degradation. The region has lost 95% of its native thornforest habitat primarily due to agricultural and urban expansion. This study aims to evaluate the current vegetative structure and composition of restored thornforest sites located in the LRGV to identify restoration methods and site characteristics that affect forest restoration outcomes. Twelve restored thornforest sites were selected for this study that varied in time since restoration, patch size, degree of isolation, and method of restoration. Canopy, understory, and ground layer vegetation were evaluated at six survey points per restored site (n = 72), and 17 environmental variables were incorporated into univariate and multivariate analyses to identify factors influencing restored plant communities. Actively restored sites showed higher overall richness, abundance, and diversity than passively restored sites. More isolated patches had higher overall richness, abundance, and diversity, and longer times since restoration began increased richness and diversity. Higher abundances of Urochloa maxima, an invasive grass, altered community composition and reduced diversity in each forest layer and overall and reduced richness in the canopy and ground layers. Important considerations for thornforest restoration in the LRGV should include invasive grass prevalence; proximity to riparian and seasonal wetland habitats; landscape factors that influence water availability; and patch geography, including shape, size, and proximity to other forest patches.
Recommended Citation
Garrett, Jerald T., Audrey J. Hicks, and Christopher A. Gabler. 2025. "Factors Influencing Plant Community Structure and Composition of Restored Tamaulipan Thornscrub Forests" Forests 16, no. 10: 1561. https://doi.org/10.3390/f16101561
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Forests
DOI
10.3390/f16101561
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Earth Sciences Commons, Environmental Sciences Commons, Forest Sciences Commons, Plant Sciences Commons
Comments
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).