First steps in monitoring the influence of trails on species composition and distribution of native and non-native plants and evaluating the success of trail restoration efforts in the Southern Patagonian Andes

PISSOLITO, CLARA INÉS; BARROS, AGUSTINA; GUERRIDO, CLAUDIA; FERNÁNDEZ, MARÍA EMILIA

Obergurgl

Workshop; Long-term Research in Mountain Areas; 2017

University Centre Obergurgl

The Patagonian Andes has seen a steep rise in the number of hikers in the last couple of decades. In some cases, this has led to undesirable impacts such as trail erosion, habitat fragmentation due to the proliferation of informal trails and the advance of plant invasions. With the objective to monitor these impacts and the outcome of remediation actions, we conducted surveys along trails in Los Glaciares National Park, Patagonia. To assess the influence of trails and distance to the trail- head on species richness and cover of native and non-native plants, we surveyed the vegetation along three trekking trails. We placed 5 m2 plots in sites at fixed distances: 0, 10 and 30 meters from the trail, in each trail. We visually estimated cover of plant per species to 1% accuracy. In the same National Park, we evaluated the suitability of restoration techniques formerly implemented. Five years after restoration was completed, we documented the progress by photographing the entire area with images of 50 cm2. A total of 85 vascular species were identified on the three trails, of which 12% were non-native. The most frequent species were the herbs Cerastium arvense (55% of the plots) and Rumex acetosella (22%), two common mountain plant invaders in the Andes. Native plant cover and species richness increased at increasing distance from the trail-head while non-native species occurrence decreased in the plots located far from the trail. At the restored area, we found that all patch transplants survived and abundant natural establishment occurred (Fig.1). We propose the long-term monitoring of these areas for conservation and management of the park and the design and implementation of standardized protocols so results are more comparable among mountain regions