Legacy effects of English ivy ( Hedera helix L.) on soils in an urban Piedmont Forest

When invasive plants are removed from degraded ecosystems, legacy effects may slow the recovery process of native plant communities. Restoration practices can be improved with knowledge of an invader's specific effects, however, detecting those effects can be complicated by removal techniques and spatial variability in the landscape. We aimed to determine legacy effects of a widespread invasive plant using a restoration approach that minimized disturbances to the native plant community and encompassed spatial variation. We evaluated soil physicochemistry and soil microbial communities in urban Piedmont forest sites in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S.A.) impacted by English ivy ( Hedera helix L.). Sites included upslope, mid‐slope, and downslope positions and were either uninvaded, invaded, or restored through manual removal of ivy. Three years following the ivy‐removal treatment we found that soils from uninvaded sites differed from invaded and restored sites in physicochemistry and microbial community composition, while few differences were found between invaded and restored sites, or among slope positions. Comparisons between uninvaded and invaded and restored treatments suggest that ivy may alter the status of soil physicochemical properties including calcium, zinc, phosphorous and pH. Microbial community composition was strongly linked to soil physicochemistry and both bacterial and fungal communities were more diverse in invaded and restored sites as compared to uninvaded sites.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Restoration Ecology

• Publication date

  2026-02-01

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/rec.70352
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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