Authors: Hoppenreijs, Jacqueline; Lind, Lovisa;Eckstein, Lutz;

Understanding how soil seed banks and vegetation relate to one another is important from both a fundamental ecological point of view, and for more applied purposes such as species and ecosystem conservation. Understanding this relationship is especially relevant in riparian zones, which fulfil many ecological functions and harbour rich species communities, but are under pressure of a multitude of anthropogenic activities worldwide. Therefore, we analysed the compositions of the soil seed bank and vegetation of 20 riparian zones throughout a boreal watershed in central Sweden by running a germination experiment on their soils and by surveying their vegetation. Our aim was to 1) find out if and how hydrogeomorphology can form a filter on the dispersal of plant seeds, and 2) what kind of ecological filters shape the formation of the riparian vegetation. We applied a functional trait approach to relate species composition in both the soil seed bank and the vegetation to environmental factors. This information can be the basis for management to protect vulnerable and exclusively riparian species, so that biological diversity and ecological functioning can be sustained.