Weed communities are more diverse, but not more abundant, in dense and complex bocage landscapes

Bocage landscapes are characterized by a network of hedgerows that delimits arable fields. Such landscapes provide many ecosystem services, including biodiversity conservation, but their effects on weed communities remain largely unknown. Bocage landscapes could affect weed communities through two main processes: plant spillover from hedgerows and increased environmental heterogeneity in arable fields. These bocage effects are also likely to vary between farming systems (conventional vs organic), due to differences in management practices.
We sampled weed communities more than 20 m from field margins in 74 arable fields (37 per farming system). Fields were located along two independent landscape gradients of total length of hedgerows (with or without a shrub layer) and organic farming cover, in Brittany (France). We analysed the effect of ‘bocage’ (i.e., the density and complexity of hedgerow networks) and farming systems at field and landscape scales on species and functional diversity..., This study was conducted in the southern part of the Zone Atelier Armorique, a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) site in Brittany, northwestern France (47°59'35N, 1°45'12W). This region is characterized by dense hedgerow networks and crop-livestock farming systems. Agricultural lands are dominated by wheat and maize fields and temporary grasslands, and dominant soil types are Brunisols and Luvisols. Hedgerows are mostly old (i.e., planted at least before World War II), and generally composed of oak (Quercus robur) or chestnut (Castanea sativa) trees planted on a bank and pruned for firewood every 9–12 years. When present, the shrub layer is generally dominated by hazel (Corylus avellana), hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), spindle (Euonymus europaeus), broom (Cytisus scoparius) or gorse (Ulex europaeus). A more detailed description of hedgerow features in the study area, based on a sample of 40 hedgerows, is provided by Boinot and Alignier (2022). Obse..., Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word (or Open Office), \#############
BOTA DATA SET
This data set provides the abundance of species in each sampled field

field = field ID
species code are abbreviated using EPPO codes ()
this data set gives the mean cover (%) of each species over the 10 quadrats for each field

\############
ENV DATA SET
This data set provides the environmental variables measured for each sampled field

field = field ID
farming = conventional farming (CF) or organic farming (OF)
crop = current crop (P = pure crop, M = mixture)
previous_crop = crop year n-1
cover_crop = presence absence of cover crop before current crop (0/1)
nb_tillage = number of tillage events between previous crop and current crop
nb_ploughing = number of ploughing events between previous crop and current crop
ploughing = presence absence of ploughing event between previous crop and current crop (0/1)
herbicide = herbicide Treatment Frequency Index between previous crop and current crop
fertilization = nitrogen amount per hectare (including both mineral ...