Landscape analysis of Illinois and Wisconsin remnant prairies<sup>1</sup>

Corbett, Erica A.; Anderson, Roger C.

doi:10.3159/1095-5674(2006)133[267:laoiaw]2.0.co;2

Cited by 21 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Soil texture and drainage are known to influence prairie plant community composition (Corbett and Anderson 2006) and forest vegetation (Grimm 1984, Almendinger 1992) in this region, yet they contributed little to the explanation of vegetation both across and within the PFB relative to climate and topography. The lack of explanatory power of soil properties across the boundary can be explained by fine scale variability in soils features (Lin et al 2005) relative to the width of the transition region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Danz¹,

Frelich²,

Niemi³

2010

Ecography

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Ecological boundaries are critical landscape regions of transition between adjacent ecological systems. While environmental controls of boundaries may operate in a scale‐dependent manner, multiple‐scale comparisons of vegetation–environment relationships have been characterized for few boundary systems. We used approximately 250 000 point records on the occurrence of woody versus grassland vegetation in conjunction with climatic, topographical, and soils data to evaluate scale effects and spatial heterogeneity in a 650‐km section of the historic prairie–forest biome boundary of Minnesota, USA. We chose this as a model system because of the availability of historical vegetation data, a considerable spatial extent, a sharp ecological transition, and the ability to avoid confounding from more recent anthropogenic land use change. We developed modeling techniques using hierarchical variance partitioning in a spatially‐structured format that allowed us to simultaneously evaluate vegetation–environment relationships across two‐dimensional space (i.e. the prairie‐forest boundary) and across spatial scales (i.e. varying extents). Soils variables displayed the least spatial autocorrelation at shortest lag distances and tended to be the least important predictors of woody vegetation at all spatial extents. Topographical variables displayed greater spatial heterogeneity in regions dominated by forest compared with prairie and were more important at fine‐intermediate spatial scales, highlighting their likely control on fire regimes. An integrated climatic variable (precipitation minus potential evapotranspiration) displayed a trend of increasing spatial variance across the study region and was unambiguously the strongest biome boundary control, although its joint influence with fire was difficult to characterize. Spatially heterogeneous vegetation–environment relationships were observed at all scales, especially at finer scales. Our results suggest that the importance of environmental controls changes smoothly rather than discretely across scales and demonstrate the need to account for spatial non‐stationarity and scale to predict and understand vegetation distribution across ecological boundaries.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Danz¹,

Frelich²,

Niemi³

2010

Ecography

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“…The study areas are characterized by a sparse overstory of Quercus muehlenbergii (chinquapin oak) and, to a lesser extent, Juniperus virginiana (eastern red cedar), Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip poplar), Acer saccharum (sugar maple), and Fraxinus americana (white ash) ( Table I). The groundcover contains a rich assemblage of forbs (e.g., Helianthus spp., Rudbeckia fulgida), grasses (Schizachyrium scoparium, Sorghastrum nutans), and shrubs (Cercis canadensis, Corylus americana), some of which are also characteristic of tallgrass prairies (Anderson, 2006;Corbett & Anderson, 2006), oak savannas of the American Midwest (Meisel, Trushenski & Weiher, 2002), and pine savannas of the southeastern USA (Drewa, Platt & Moser, 2002a). Similar to other calcareous barrens and woodlands, our sites contain calciphiles such as Lithospermum canescens and Hybanthus concolor (Lawless, Baskin & Baskin, 2006).…”

Section: Study Sitesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Are vegetation—environment relationships different between herbaceous and woody groundcover plants in barrens with shallow soils?

Petersen¹,

Drewa²

2009

Écoscience

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“…This relationship is regulated by environmental stress in areas of low biomass and by biotic stress caused by reduced light and competition for resources from dominant species in areas of high biomass (Grime 1973, Huston 1979, Gough et al 1994, Grace 1999, Houseman and Gross 2006. In prairie, drainage is more important than soil nutrients in regulating species distribution and abundance (Curtis 1959, Grace et al 2000, Corbett and Anderson 2006. This suggests that moisture stress limits species abundance in dry habitats, while available light and a small number of strong competitors may limit species abundance in wet-mesic habitats.…”

Section: Species Diversity Across the Cover-productivity Gradientmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeated burning of eastern tallgrass prairie increases richness and diversity, stabilizing late successional vegetation

Bowles

Jones

2013

Ecological Applications

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Understanding temporal effects of fire frequency on plant species diversity and vegetation structure is critical for managing tallgrass prairie (TGP), which occupies a mid-continental longitudinal precipitation and productivity gradient. Eastern TGP has contributed little information toward understanding whether vegetation-fire interactions are uniform or change across this biome. We resampled 34 fire-managed mid- and late-successional ungrazed TGP remnants occurring across a dry to wet-mesic moisture gradient in the Chicago region of Illinois, USA. We compared hypotheses that burning acts either as a stabilizing force or causes change in diversity and structure, depending upon fire frequency and successional stage. Based on western TGP, we expected a unimodal species richness distribution across a cover-productivity gradient, variable functional group responses to fire frequency, and a negative relationship between fire frequency and species richness. Species diversity was unimodal across the cover gradient and was more strongly humpbacked in stands with greater fire frequency. In support of a stabilizing hypothesis, temporal similarity of late-successional vegetation had a logarithmic relationship with increasing fire frequency, while richness and evenness remained stable. Temporal similarity within mid-successional stands was not correlated with fire frequency, while richness increased and evenness decreased over time. Functional group responses to fire frequency were variable. Summer forb richness increased under high fire frequency, while C4 grasses, spring forbs, and nitrogen-fixing species decreased with fire exclusion. On mesic and wet-mesic sites, vegetation structure measured by the ratio of woody to graminoid species was negatively correlated with abundance of forbs and with fire frequency. Our findings that species richness responds unimodally to an environmental-productivity gradient, and that fire exclusion increases woody vegetation and leads to loss of C4 and N-fixing species, suggest that these processes are uniform across the TGP biome and not affected by its rainfall-productivity gradient. However, increasing fire frequency in eastern TGP appears to increase richness of summer forbs and stabilize late-successional vegetation in the absence of grazing, and these processes may differ across the longitudinal axis of TGP. Managing species diversity in ungrazed eastern TGP may be dependent upon high fire frequency that removes woody vegetation and prevents biomass accumulation.

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Landscape analysis of Illinois and Wisconsin remnant prairies¹

Cited by 21 publications

References 22 publications

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Are vegetation—environment relationships different between herbaceous and woody groundcover plants in barrens with shallow soils?

Repeated burning of eastern tallgrass prairie increases richness and diversity, stabilizing late successional vegetation

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Landscape analysis of Illinois and Wisconsin remnant prairies1

Cited by 21 publications

References 22 publications

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Vegetation controls vary across space and spatial scale in a historic grassland-forest biome boundary

Are vegetation—environment relationships different between herbaceous and woody groundcover plants in barrens with shallow soils?

Repeated burning of eastern tallgrass prairie increases richness and diversity, stabilizing late successional vegetation

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Landscape analysis of Illinois and Wisconsin remnant prairies¹