Chihuahuan Desert Grassland Responds Similarly to Fall, Spring, and Summer Fires During Prolonged Drought

Ladwig, Laura M.; Collins, Scott L.; Ford, Paulette L.; White, Laura

doi:10.2111/rem-d-13-00133.1

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Despite these convergent responses to interannual precipitation, B. eriopoda and B. gracilis differ in response to directional changes in several key environmental drivers. Bouteloua gracilis is more drought, grazing, and fire tolerant than B. eriopoda (Gosz and Gosz 1996;Báez et al 2013;Ladwig et al 2014). Moreover, B. gracilis appears to be a superior competitor to B. eriopoda.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Long-Term Dynamics and Hotspots of Change in a Desert Grassland Plant Community

Collins

Xia²

2015

The American Naturalist

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Natural and anthropogenic disturbances are key drivers of vegetation dynamics. The hierarchical-response framework proposes that directional change in communities is driven by chronic resource alterations resulting from global environmental change in the absence of disturbance. Because vegetation is spatially heterogeneous, some local areas within a larger community may be more dynamic than others. Thus, the average rate of change may mask dynamic hotspots and local areas where vegetation remains stable. We used long-term data from two line-intercept transects in undisturbed desert grassland to quantify large-scale community dynamics, small-scale local dynamics, and boundary dynamics of grass patches in the absence of disturbance. We found that directional change in species composition was evident but that the overall rate of change varied spatially. Cover of both dominant grasses, Bouteloua eriopoda and Bouteloua gracilis, increased over the full transects, but most change occurred in localized hotspots. Patch boundaries of the dominant grasses exhibited both stability and local dynamics. Overall, the increasing abundance of B. eriopoda may predispose this grassland to shrub encroachment, whereas locally stable areas may prove resistant to state transition. More generally, global environmental change may be a pervasive driver of vegetation dynamics through localized hotspots of temporal change and spatially varying changes in patch boundaries in the absence of disturbance.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Long-Term Dynamics and Hotspots of Change in a Desert Grassland Plant Community

Collins

Xia²

2015

The American Naturalist

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“…They attributed these responses to differential sensitivities of species to environmental drivers during early compared to later life stages (e.g., Roleda et al, 2007;Medeiros et al, 2012). This mechanism may not apply to our desert grassland, however, because most of these grassland species propagate asexually and gradually regain cover following fire (Parmenter, 2008;Ladwig et al, 2014). Community composition in this grassland includes annual and perennial forbs that depend primarily on winter and spring soil moisture (Xia et al, 2010), and long-lived perennial C 4 clonal grasses, which generally respond most strongly to summer monsoon precipitation (Muldavin et al, 2008;Collins & Xia, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Press–pulse interactions: effects of warming, N deposition, altered winter precipitation, and fire on desert grassland community structure and dynamics

Collins

Ladwig

Petrie

et al. 2016

Global Change Biology

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Global environmental change is altering temperature, precipitation patterns, resource availability, and disturbance regimes. Theory predicts that ecological presses will interact with pulse events to alter ecosystem structure and function. In 2006, we established a long-term, multifactor global change experiment to determine the interactive effects of nighttime warming, increased atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition, and increased winter precipitation on plant community structure and aboveground net primary production (ANPP) in a northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland. In 2009, a lightning-caused wildfire burned through the experiment. Here, we report on the interactive effects of these global change drivers on pre- and postfire grassland community structure and ANPP. Our nighttime warming treatment increased winter nighttime air temperatures by an average of 1.1 °C and summer nighttime air temperature by 1.5 °C. Soil N availability was 2.5 times higher in fertilized compared with control plots. Average soil volumetric water content (VWC) in winter was slightly but significantly higher (13.0% vs. 11.0%) in plots receiving added winter rain relative to controls, and VWC was slightly higher in warmed (14.5%) compared with control (13.5%) plots during the growing season even though surface soil temperatures were significantly higher in warmed plots. Despite these significant treatment effects, ANPP and plant community structure were highly resistant to these global change drivers prior to the fire. Burning reduced the cover of the dominant grasses by more than 75%. Following the fire, forb species richness and biomass increased significantly, particularly in warmed, fertilized plots that received additional winter precipitation. Thus, although unburned grassland showed little initial response to multiple ecological presses, our results demonstrate how a single pulse disturbance can interact with chronic alterations in resource availability to increase ecosystem sensitivity to multiple drivers of global environmental change.

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“…That dicots increase after fire is commonly observed in semiarid grasslands (Collins et al., ; Ladwig et al., ; Scheintaub et al., ; Snyman & Cowling, ) and is usually attributed to reduced interspecific competition with dominant grasses (Smeins & Merrill, ; Sasaki & Lauenroth, ). In this study, the higher abundance of perennial and cool season annual dicots in the control zone compared to unburned grassland could be caused by a considerable cover loss of dominant perennial grasses and a reduced number of grass species (personal observation; Mulhouse, Hallett, & Collins, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Directly after fire in semiarid grasslands, there is a decrease in woody taxa (Parmenter, ; Smeins & Merrill, ), grass biomass (Collins et al., ; Scheintaub, Derner, Kelly, & Knapp, ) and total above‐ground plant biomass (Scheintaub et al., ). As a result, germination, establishment and survivorship of perennial grasses and dicot seedlings may increase (Snyman & Cowling, ; Zimmermann et al., ) along with perennial dicot productivity (Ladwig, Collins, Ford, & White, ; Parmenter, ; Scheintaub et al., ). With the reduction of vegetation biomass in these ecosystems, diversity may increase (Ladwig et al., ) or become more even (Drewa & Havstad, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, germination, establishment and survivorship of perennial grasses and dicot seedlings may increase (Snyman & Cowling, ; Zimmermann et al., ) along with perennial dicot productivity (Ladwig, Collins, Ford, & White, ; Parmenter, ; Scheintaub et al., ). With the reduction of vegetation biomass in these ecosystems, diversity may increase (Ladwig et al., ) or become more even (Drewa & Havstad, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological engineers’ nests benefit plant recovery following fire in a semiarid grassland, New Mexico, USA

Nicolai

2019

J Vegetation Science

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Questions:Ants and rodents are recognized as ecosystem engineers worldwide creating soil-modified nests and adjacent edges with superior resources. The influence of Dipodomys spectabilis (rat) and Pogonomyrmex rugosus (ant) on nests and edges would be similar in burned and unburned habitat on functional groups' cover, density, number of inflorescences and species number. We hypothesize that annual and perennial dicots would recover faster on rat patches than on burned grassland, dicots and grasses would recover faster on ant patches than on burned grassland, and annual dicots would recover faster on rat than on ant patches, whereas grasses would recover faster on ant than on rat patches.Location: Semiarid grassland, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA. Methods:We analyzed annual and perennial dicots, grasses and subshrubs in burned and unburned plots at 80 nests during cool-and warm-seasons two years post-fire.Data were collected at nest top (mound), edge, and 20 m (control) from the edge.Results: Cover, density and species richness of different functional groups were low on animal mounds in unburned and burned plots. Ant edges had greater perennial dicot cover, grass cover and richness while rat edges had lower grass density and richness than control sites at unburned and burned plots. Perennial dicot density and richness recovered faster at rat mounds and edges than control. Ant edges yielded faster recovery of grass inflorescences than control. Dicots recovered faster on rat than ant mounds whereas grasses grew faster on ant edges. Conclusions: Rats create nests enhancing density of recovering dicots and ant edges facilitate reproduction of recovering grasses. Equal regeneration between animal nests and grassland occurred commonly when fire reduced grass competition. Dysochory, granivory and fire intensity may influence recovery. Nests may be sources of reestablishment and seed dispersal. Recovery of grassland may be amplified as plants infill from engineered nests. K E Y W O R D S ants, community ecology, dicots, grassland restoration, herbaceous community structure, nests, plant recovery facilitation, plant-animal interactions, rodent burrow, wildfire 710 | Journal of Vegetation Science NICOLAI

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Chihuahuan Desert Grassland Responds Similarly to Fall, Spring, and Summer Fires During Prolonged Drought

Cited by 10 publications

References 45 publications

Long-Term Dynamics and Hotspots of Change in a Desert Grassland Plant Community

Long-Term Dynamics and Hotspots of Change in a Desert Grassland Plant Community

Press–pulse interactions: effects of warming, N deposition, altered winter precipitation, and fire on desert grassland community structure and dynamics

Ecological engineers’ nests benefit plant recovery following fire in a semiarid grassland, New Mexico, USA

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