Functional groups and dispersal strategies as guides for predicting vegetation dynamics on reclaimed mines Josu G. Alday • Ye ´sica Pallavicini • Rob H. Marrs • Carolina Martı ´nez-Ruiz Received: 28 April 2010 / Accepted: 4 July 2011 / Published online: 21 July 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract The development of species richness and plant cover through time are two important measures that are often used to assess success in land reclamation schemes. We expand this approach by considering functional groups in terms of life-history traits and dispersal strategies, as important compo- nents of ecosystem function and colonisation. Here, we test, if the species richness and cover of these functional groups are changed during post-treatment succession in 26 reclaimed coal mines, and whether these changes are related to selected soil variables (C:N, total N, and available P). Species richness showed a skewed unimodal response with time since reclamation, with a peak at 13 years. The richness of life-forms showed a clear dominance order starting with annuals, followed by perennial herbs and then woody species; whereas, when plant cover was considered, perennial herbs dominated the entire sequence. Dispersal strategies showed that anemoch- orous and zoochorous species were the most impor- tant groups. Soil variables were correlated with richness and cover of perennial herbs, woody species, and with anemochorous richness and zoochorous species cover. Our findings indicate that those species which respond during succession on reclaimed coal wastes are controlled in some part, by the attributes of functional groups, whereas the colonisation process is more dependent on seed sources from the local species pool than on soil properties. Our results also highlighted that the use of life-forms and dispersal strategy patterns improved the description and pre- diction of vegetation dynamics, and allowed us to identify successional stages better. We discussed the implication of these findings for future reclamation approaches in similar areas. Keywords Vegetation succession Á Life-forms Á Soil variables Á Diversity Á Nitrogen Á Phosphorus Introduction Successional studies are often used to identify important ecological processes for the ecological restoration of degraded lands (Pickett et al. 2008) and their importance is increasing due to accelerating land degradation in many areas of the world. Such studies have helped in site amelioration (Bradshaw 1997), development of nutrient cycling (Tordoff et al. J. G. Alday (&) Á R. H. Marrs Applied Vegetation Dynamics Laboratory, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GP, UK e-mail: josucham@agro.uva.es; josucham@gmail.com J. G. Alday Á Y. Pallavicini Á C. Martı ´nez-Ruiz Sustainable Forest Management Research Institute UVa-INIA, Palencia, Spain Y. Pallavicini Á C. Martı ´nez-Ruiz A ´ rea de Ecologı ´a, E.T.S. de Ingenierı ´as Agrarias de Palencia, Universidad de Valladolid, Campus La Yutera, Avda. de Madrid 44, 34071 Palencia, Spain 123 Plant Ecol (2011) 212:1759–1775 DOI 10.1007/s11258-011-9947-6