Variation partitioning of landscape structure on arable plant communities at field scale

Abstract: Arable plants communities suffered dramatic declines in the last decades due to theintensification in farming practices. Impacts of changes in arable management and land-useincreases generally involved a local simplification of landscape structure. We investigated theeffect of landscape structure and complexity on the species composition of arable plantcommunities. We characterized landscape structure in a circle with 1km radius by the percentageof natural vegetation, the shape index of the patches and the perimeter-area ratio and its influenceon species assemblages at field scale. Species composition was related to the landscape metricsusing Redundancy Analysis (RDA). Variation partitioning was used to characterize the partialeffects of landscape structure on the arable community.According to our findings, landscape structure effects on arable plants communities at fieldscale are limited to the field boundaries whereas in the field edges and field centres agriculturalmanagement hides landscape structure effects.