Reproductive output--number of flowering heads: Soil Heterogeneity With Disturbance

This study is one of six experiments (E086, E103, E104, E105, E106, E107, E108) that test the influence of many factors on the diversity and abundance of prairie plant communities. Each "community" is a 2.25 meter square plot seeded with the same amount of seeds from 59 different species of plants. The first experiment is a nitrogen-fire-water factorial. The second experiment is a nitrogen-pH factorial. The third experiment is a nitrogen gradient and the fourth experiment is a nitrogen gradient with a diversity of seeds added each year. This fifth experiment is a disturbance gradient and this experiment (E107) has three levels of soil heterogeneity (variance from the mean) for both nitrogen and pH.