Published

This project represents the renewal of the Cedar Creek Natural History Area Long-Term Ecological Research project. Long-term observation and experimentation will be used to examine the controls of successional dynamics and spatial patterning in ecosystems at the prairie-forest boundary. The investigators will build on the detailed data record already accumulated in a series of permanent observational and experimental studies in old field and will expand the project into a range of non- successional habitats. Studies will focus on hypotheses concerning the direct, indirect, and feedback effects of various species and ecosystem elements on each other, and how they control both successional dynamics and spatial patterning in non-successional ecosystems. The main processes to be studied are (1) controls of carbon and nitrogen dynamics in soils: (2) controls of primary production and plant species composition; (3) controls of herbivore dynamics and abundances; and (4) the impacts of disturbances such as fire, gopher mounds and climatic change. The 6-year-running data sets already collected on physical factors, soils plants, and herbivores have allowed the investigators to address some major questions, but it will become increasingly unique and powerful with each additional year of observational and experimental data. The generality of on-site research will be tested by performing a series of comparisons and syntheses across the LTER network. Institutional support for the research is solid. Collaborative arrangements with two young scientists from Idaho State University should continue to be productive. The project team is a good one. In addition to providing fundamental insight on the processes that are generative to ecological succession the project should also produce significant implications for agricultural management since agriculture must interact with the natural ecological matrix in which it is embedded.