Published

Credit: Jill Haukos

Credit: Jill Haukos

Experiments at KNZ LTER have identified significant time lags between treatment initiation and sustained community effects. At a minimum, these times lags are 3-6 years for water and nutrient manipulations, but can be decades according to fire suppression and woody plant expansion studies. Decreases in plant diversity evident in the first few years after water and nutrient enrichment did not necessarily persist long term due to stochastic influences on community assembly. In streams, communities reassembled and ecosystem processes recovered over weeks to months following flood or drought. These observations represent a paradigm shift in understanding grassland assembly and spatial and temporal responses to changing external drivers.

Learn more

  1. Ratajczak Z, et al. 2014. Fire dynamics distinguish grasslands, shrublands, and woodlands as alternative attractors in the Central Great Plains of North America. Journal of Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365- 2745.12311
  2. Avolio ML, et al. 2014. Changes in plant community composition, not diversity, during a decade of nitrogen and phosphorus additions drive above-ground productivity in a tallgrass prairie. Journal of Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12312
  3. Baer SG, et al. 2016. Environmental heterogeneity has a weak effect on diversity during community assembly in tallgrass prairie. Ecological Monographs. doi: 10.1890/15-0888.1

Contact

Jesse Nippert
nippert@ksu.edu

Posted:  July 15, 2020