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59 results for “semi-arid grasslands”
Effects of grazing on C:N:P stoichiometry attenuate from soils to plants and insect herbivores in a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Reducing soil erosion by improving community functional diversity in semi-arid grasslands
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Seasonal community stability increased with water addition and shrub removal but reduced with nitrogen addition in semi-arid grassland
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Unaltered soil microbial community composition, but decreased metabolic activity in a semi-arid grassland after two years of passive experimental warming
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Data from: Seasonality of precipitation interacts with exotic species to alter composition and phenology of a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Plant quantity and quality regulate the diversity of arthropod communities in a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Direct effects of nitrogen addition on seed germination of eight semi-arid grassland species
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Data from: Seasonality of soil moisture mediates responses of ecosystem phenology to elevated CO2 and warming in a semi-arid grassland
Vegetation greenness, detected using digital photography, is useful for monitoring phenology of plant growth, carbon uptake, and water loss at the ecosystem level. Assessing ecosystem phenology by greenness is especially useful in spatially extensive, water-limited ecosystems such as the grasslands of the western United States, where productivity is moisture dependent and may become increasingly vulnerable to future climate change. We used repeat photography and a novel means of quantifying greenness in digital photographs to assess how the individual and combined effects of warming and elevated CO2 impact ecosystem phenology (greenness and plant cover) in a semi-arid grassland over an 8-year period. Climate variability within and among years was the proximate driver of ecosystem phenology. Individual and combined effects of warming and elevated CO2 were significant at times, but mediated by variation in both intra- and inter-annual precipitation. Specifically, warming generally enhanced plant cover and greenness early in the growing season but often had a negative effect during the middle of the summer, offsetting the early season positive effects. The individual effects of elevated CO2 on plant cover and greenness were generally neutral. Opposing seasonal variations in the effects of warming and less so elevated CO2 cancelled each other out over an entire growing season, leading to no net effect of treatments on annual accumulation of greenness. The main effect of elevated CO2 dampened quickly, but warming continued to affect plant cover and plot greenness throughout the experiment. The combination of warming and elevated CO2 had a generally positive effect on greenness, especially early in the growing season and in later years of the experiment, enhanced annual greenness accumulation. However, interannual precipitation variation had larger effect on greenness, with 2-3 times greater greenness in wet years than in dry years. Synthesis. Seasonal variation in timing and amount of precipitation governs grassland phenology, greenness, and the potential for carbon uptake. Our results indicate that concurrent changes in precipitation regimes mediate vegetation responses to warming and elevated atmospheric CO2 in semi-arid grasslands. Even small changes in vegetation phenology and greenness in response to warming and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, such as those we report here, can have large consequences for the future of grasslands.
Data from: Grazer effects on soil carbon storage vary by herbivore assemblage in a semi-arid grassland
1. Accounting for 10-30% of global soil organic carbon, grassland soils potentially present a large reservoir for storing atmospheric CO2. Livestock grazing management can substantially affect grassland soil carbon (C) storage, but few controlled experiments have explored how herbivore assemblages (different herbivore species and combinations) affect soil C storage. 2. We examined effects of moderate grazing by different herbivore assemblages (no grazing; sheep grazing; cattle grazing; mixed grazing by sheep and cattle) on soil organic carbon storage in two types of grassland communities (high forbs/high diversity and low forbs/low diversity), within a semi-arid grassland with a five-year grazing history. 3. We found that herbivore assemblage generated varying effects on soil C storage and the effects were subject to grassland community types. In the low diversity community, none of three herbivore assemblages studied had obvious effects on soil C storage. In the high diversity community, however, sheep grazing significantly decreased soil C storage due to high selectivity for high quality forbs, and cattle grazing had no effects on soil C storage, while mixed grazing by sheep and cattle significantly increased soil C storage. Overall, soil C storage was highest in mixed-grazed grassland sites with high diversity. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our study suggests that explicitly incorporating grazer species and the combination of grazing livestock into grassland grazing management may help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Caution should be exercised when using grazer species with high food selectivity when grazing management is also aimed at climate mitigation, especially in grasslands with abundant high quality forbs and high plant diversity, as sheep grazing may reduce soil carbon (C) storage. Moreover, mixed grazing, including multiple herbivore species, may contribute to a reduction in foraging selectivity for a plant community by means of complementary foraging. It could therefore be considered as an optimal grazing management strategy to maintain and improve soil C storage.
Data from: Life in interstitial space: biocrusts inhibit exotic but not native plant establishment in semi-arid grasslands
1. Exotic plant species commonly exploit disturbances more successfully than native plants. This outcome is widely attributed to the fact that disturbance reduces biotic resistance from native plant competitors. However, biocrusts, communities of mosses, lichens and microorganisms, are a prominent component of semi-arid grasslands occurring in the interstitial spaces between vascular plants. Biocrusts may provide an important source of biotic resistance to invaders, different from native plant competition, but poorly understood. 2. We established a large-scale field experiment to examine how intact versus disturbed biocrusts influenced the emergence and establishment of four native and four exotic plant species in intermountain bunchgrass systems over two years - one wet and one dry. We also conducted a complementary greenhouse experiment to explore how differences in moisture might influence biocrust effects on germination. 3. In the greenhouse, biocrusts inhibited the germination of both native and exotic plants in the high moisture treatment only. In field experiments, biocrusts inhibited the overall emergence of exotic seedlings in the wetter of the two years and inhibited the establishment of exotic seedlings in both years, but they had no overall effect on the emergence or establishment of native seedlings. Our results demonstrate that intact biocrusts in intermountain grasslands can suppress the establishment of some exotic plants, but have much weaker effects on natives. They also suggest that water availability may influence biocrust effects on seed germination. 4. Synthesis. Our results indicate that intact biocrusts may provide an important source of biotic resistance to exotic plant invasions in intermountain grasslands. Furthermore, precipitation inputs may mediate biocrust effects on plant establishment.
Data from: Grazing and resource availability control soil nematode body size and abundance-mass relationship in semi-arid grassland
1. Body size is a central functional trait in ecological communities. Despite recognition of the importance of above-belowground interactions, effects of aboveground herbivores on size and abundance-size relationships in soil fauna are almost uncharted. Depending on climate and soil properties, herbivores may increase basal resources of soil food webs, or reduce pore space, mechanisms expected to have contrasting effects on soil animal body size. 2. We investigated how body size and shape of soil nematodes responded to mammalian grazers in three semi-arid grassland sites, along a gradient of soil texture and organic matter (OM) in a long-term herbivore removal study. We analysed nematode mass, length, diameter, body size distribution, and biomass distribution. We formulated two mechanistic hypotheses to assess whether resource availability or pore space was the dominant abiotic control and modulated the effects of grazing. 3. In ungrazed soils, average and maximum nematode size, as well as abundance and biomass of large nematodes, were greater in the high-OM than in the low-OM soil, and intermediate in the medium-OM soil. Grazing promoted larger sizes in the low-OM soil, where it had been shown to increase organic matter and microbial biomass, and led to more homogeneous average size and body size distribution across sites. The results support the hypothesis that nematode size was controlled by basal resource availability rather than by pore space. However, body shape might have been constrained by small pores in the fine-texture, high-OM soil, where nematodes were more elongated. 4. Grazing may facilitate larger sizes in soil nematode communities by boosting basal resources where these are limiting, with important implications for estimations of nematode biomass and contribution to carbon and nutrient cycling. These findings contribute to the insofar-limited mechanistic understanding of how herbivores can shape functional traits of soil fauna, and demonstrate that animals at one trophic level may control patterns in body size and abundance-size relationships in other trophic levels without a direct predator-prey or competitive linkage between them.
Study on the influence mechanism of different grassland utilization on soil preferential flow in semi-arid grassland in northern China
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Data from: Life in interstitial space: biocrusts inhibit exotic but not native plant establishment in semi-arid grasslands
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Data from: Seasonality of soil moisture mediates responses of ecosystem phenology to elevated CO2 and warming in a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Grazing and resource availability control soil nematode body size and abundance-mass relationship in semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Reciprocal facilitation between large herbivores and ants in a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Grazer effects on soil carbon storage vary by herbivore assemblage in a semi-arid grassland
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Data from: Environmental changes drive the temporal stability of semi-arid natural grasslands through altering species asynchrony
Stability is an important property of ecological systems, many of which are experiencing increasing levels of anthropogenic environmental changes. However, how these environmental changes influence ecosystem stability remains poorly understood. We conducted an 8-year field experiment in a semi-arid natural grassland to explore the effects of two common environmental changes, precipitation and nitrogen enrichment, on the temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass. A split-plot design, with precipitation as the main plot factor and nitrogen as the sub-plot factor, was used. Temporal stability was related to potential explanatory abiotic and biotic variables using regressions and structural equation modelling. Increase in growing season precipitation enhanced plant species richness and promoted temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass. Nitrogen fertilization, however, reduced both plant species richness and temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass. Contrary to expectations, species richness was not an important driver of stability. Instead, community temporal stability was mainly driven by water and nitrogen availability that modulated the degree of species asynchrony, and, to a lesser extent, by the stability of dominant plant species. Synthesis. Our results highlight the importance of limiting resources for regulating community biomass stability, and suggest that the projected increase in growing season precipitation may potentially offset negative effects of increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition on species diversity and community stability in semi-arid grasslands.
Data from: Environmental changes drive the temporal stability of semi-arid natural grasslands through altering species asynchrony
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.