Response of a mixed grass prairie to an extreme precipitation event

Ecosphere

Volumn 6, Issue 10, 2015, Pages

  Concilio, Amy L ^a   Prevéy, Janet S ^b   Masta, Peter O ^a   O'Connor, James ^a   Nippert, Jesse B ^c   Seastedt, Timothy R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

^b WSL INSTITUTE FOR SNOW AND AVALANCHE RESEARCH SLF   (Switzerland)

^c KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Alyssum parviflorum; Bromus tectorum; Colorado Front Range; Erodium cicutarium; Introduced species; Legacy effects; Nitrogen; Plant community change; Precipitation seasonality; Rocky Mountains

Indexed keywords

EID: 84944890551     PISSN: None     EISSN: 21508925     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1890/ES15-00073.1     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Beals, S., L. M. Hartley, J. S. Prevéy, and T. R. Seastedt. 2014. The effects of black-tailed prairie dogs on plant communities within a complex urban landscape: An ecological surprise? Ecology 95:1349-1359.
2. Binkley, D., and P. Matson. 1983. Ion exchange resin bag method for assessing forest soil nitrogen availability. Soil Science Society of America Journal 47:1050-1052.
3. Blumenthal, D. M. 2009. Carbon addition interacts with water availability to reduce invasive forb establishment in a semi-arid grassland. Biological Invasions 11:1281-1290.
4. Bowman, W. D., J. Murgel, T. Blett, and E. Porter. 2012. Nitrogen critical loads for alpine vegetation and soils in Rocky Mountain National Park. Journal of Environmental Management 103:165-171.
5. Cherwin, K. L., T. R. Seastedt, and K. N. Suding. 2009. Effects of nutrient manipulations and grass removal on cover, species composition, and invasibility of a novel grassland community in Colorado. Restoration Ecology 17:818-826.
6. Denslow, J. S. 2014. Plant community assembly. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 95:334-336.
7. Diez, J. M., et al. 2012. Will extreme climatic events facilitate biological invasions? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10:249-257.
8. Dukes, J. S., and H. A. Mooney. 1999. Does global change increase the success of biological invaders? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 14:135-139.
9. Hobbs, R. J., and L. F. Huenneke. 1992. Disturbance, diversity, and invasion: implications for conservation. Conservation Biology 6:324-37.
10. Huxman, T. E., et al. 2004. Convergence across biomes to a common rain-use efficiency. Nature 429:651-654.
11. James, J. J., K. W. Davies, R. L. Sheley, and Z. T. Aanderud. 2008. Linking nitrogen partitioning and species abundance to invasion resistance in the Great Basin. Oecologia 156:637-648.
12. Jentsch, A., J. Kreyling, and C. Beierkuhnlein. 2007. A new generation of climate-change experiments: events, not trends. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 5:365-374.
13. Knapp, A. K., et al. 2008. Consequences of more extreme precipitation regimes for terrestrial ecosystems. BioScience 58:811-821.
14. Lajtha, K. 1988. The use of ion-exchange resin bags for measuring nutrient availability in an arid ecosystem. Plant and Soil 105:105-111.
15. MacDougall, A. S., B. Gilbert, and J. M. Levine. 2009. Plant invasions and the niche. Journal of Eoclogy 97:609-615.
16. NOAA. 2014. Preliminary precipitation totals map. September 9-16, 2013 for Denver/Boulder., Colorado, USA. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/?n=stormtotals-092013
17. Paschke, M. W., T. McLendon, and E. F. Redente. 2000. Nitrogen availability and old-field succession in a shortgrass steppe. Ecosystems 3:144-158.
18. Prevéy, J. S. 2014. Precipitation change in a semi-arid grassland: plant community responses and management strategies. Dissertation. University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
19. Prevéy, J. S., D. G. Knochel, and T. R. Seastedt. 2014. Mowing reduces exotic annual grasses but increases exotic forbs in a semiarid grassland. Restoration Ecology 22:774-781.
20. Prevéy, J. S., and T. R. Seastedt. 2014. Seasonality of precipitation interacts with exotic species to alter composition and phenology of a semi-arid grassland. Journal of Ecology 102:1549-1561.
21. Pyšek, P., and D. M. Richardson. 2007. Traits associated with invasiveness in alien plants: where do we stand? Pages 97-125 in W. Nentwig, editor. Biological invasions. Springer, Berlin, Germany.
22. Ray, A. J., J. J. Barsugli, K. B. Averyt, et al. 2008. Climate change in Colorado: a synthesis to support water resources management and adaptation. Report for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA. http://wwa.colorado.edu/publications/reports/WWA-ClimateChangeColoradoReport-2008.pdf
23. R Development Core Team. 2012. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
24. Seastedt, T. R., J. M. Briggs, and D. J. Gibson. 1991. Controls of nitrogen limitation in tallgrass prairie. Oecologia 87:72-79.
25. Seastedt, T. R., and P. Pyšek. 2011. Mechanisms of plant invasions of North American and European Grasslands. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 42:133-153.
26. Seastedt, T. R., and K. N. Suding. 2007. Biotic constraints on the invasion of diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa) in North American grasslands. Oecologia 151:626-636.
27. Stark, J. M., and J. M. Norton. 2015. The invasive annual cheatgrass increases nitrogen availability in 24-year-old replicated field plots. Oecologia 177:799-809.
28. Thompson, R. M., J. Beardall, J. Beringer, M. Grace, and P. Sardina. 2013. Means and extremes: building variability into community-level climate change experiments. Ecology Letters 16:799-806.
29. USDA. 2001. Web soil survey. Natural Resources Conservation Center. http://websoilsurvey.nrcs. usda.gov/app/WebSoilSurvey.aspx
30. White, S. R., J. F. Cahill, and E. W. Bork. 2014a. Implications of precipitation, warming, and clipping for grazing resources in Canadian prairies. Agronomy Journal 106:33-42.
31. White, S. R., E. W. Bork, and J. F. Cahill. 2014b. Direct and indirect drivers of plant diversity responses to climate and clipping across northern temperate grassland. Ecology 95:3093-3103.
32. Wilcox, K. R., J. C. Von Fischer, J. M. Muscha, M. K. Petersen, and A. K. Knapp. 2014. Contrasting above- and belowground sensitivity of three Great Plains grasslands to altered rainfall regimes. Global Change Biology 21:335-344.
33. WRCC [Western Regional Climate Center]. 2014. Recent climate in the West. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu
34. 2 enhances plant community stability by suppressing dominant plant species in a mixed-grass prairie. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111:15456-15461.
35. Zeppel, M. J. B., J. V. Wilks, and J. D. Lewis. 2014. Impacts of extreme precipitation and seasonal changes in precipitation on plants. Biogeosciences 11:3083-3093.
36. Zhang, Y., et al. 2013. Extreme precipitation patterns and reductions of terrestrial ecosystem production across biomes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 118:148-157.