Environmental Variation and Vegetative Composition in Beaver Engineered Ecosystems

Abstract

The Colorado Rocky Mountains are uniquely heterogeneous, with beaver-engineered wetlands being sites with especially high relative biodiversity. Despite the large body of research available on the impacts of beaver activity on wetlands, the specific mechanisms of beaver activity that create high plant biodiversity in this unique disturbance regime are poorly understood. As beaver reintroduction, BDAs, and the implementation of wetland restoration gain popularity, it is important to understand the mechanisms that make beavers such powerful ecosystem engineers, and why those engineering efforts are so effective at promoting diversity. This research explored the role of temporal environmental variability, as measured using uncrewed aircraft system (drone) data, in maintaining the unique vegetation communities present in beaver ponds. While there were no significant differences in plant alpha diversity found between stable and highly variable ponds, multivariate ordination techniques (non- metric multidimensional scaling and PERMANOVA) showed significant differences in the community composition based on variability. The findings underscore the complexity of beaver pond ecosystems and suggest that a mosaic of factors contribute to the heterogeneity of beaver pond vegetation.

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