Authors

Ana Davidson

Date

2013

Abstract

The Sevilleta Gunnison’s Prairie Dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) Restoration project examines keystone consumer (herbivore) effects on grassland in concert with ecological restoration of a “species of greatest conservation need in New Mexico” (NMGandF Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy, 2007). SevLTER partners directly with Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico Game and Fish, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station and non-profit Prairie Dog Pals on this ambitious effort to re-establish Gunnison’s prairie dogs to blue grama dominated (Bouteloua gracilis) Great Plains grassland at the foothills of the Los Pinos Mountains on Sevilleta. While engaged in wildlife management aimed at translocation of approximately 3000 individual prairie dogs, ultimately establishing 5-6 colonies over a 500 ha area, SevLTER is focusing resources on monitoring population dynamics of reintroduced prairie dogs and their effects on vegetation production and diversity, soil disturbance and grasshopper community composition. In this experiment, prairie dogs act as the treatment on a grassland site where the species was extirpated 40 years ago. The long term nature of the project lies in the course of re-establishing prairie dogs combined with the ultimate research goal of describing the functional role of Gunnison’s prairie dogs in an arid grassland ecosystem: first we are challenged to develop and document an economical and efficient management strategy which maximizes reintroduction success and colony survival; second we are tasked with monitoring prairie dog dynamics and their effects on the grassland throughout re-establishment and into a future state, when presumably management intervention will have subsided and we characterize the ecosystem as ‘restored’ – both in the face of highly variable abiotic inputs such as precipitation and temperature and biotic impacts such as predation.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/1928/29957.1

Other Identifier

SEV257

Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) Identifier

knb-lter-sev.257.169578

Document Type

Dataset

Comments

This dataset was originally published on the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Data Portal, https://portal.lternet.edu, and potentially via other repositories or portals as described. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the source data package is doi:10.6073/pasta/b539b5e5a77ff5f5f46d06b3e1467f43, and may be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/b539b5e5a77ff5f5f46d06b3e1467f43. Metadata and files included in this record mirror as closely as possible the source data and documentation, with the provenance metadata and quality report generated by the LTER portal reproduced here as '*-provenance.xml' and *-report.html' files, respectively.

Rights

Data Policies: This dataset is released to the public and may be freely downloaded. Please keep the designated Contact person informed of any plans to use the dataset. Consultation or collaboration with the original investigators is strongly encouraged. Publications and data products that make use of the dataset must include proper acknowledgement of the Sevilleta LTER. Datasets must be cited as in the example provided. A copy of any publications using these data must be supplied to the Sevilleta LTER Information Manager. By downloading any data you implicitly acknowledge the LTER Data Policy (http://www.lternet.edu/data/netpolicy.html).

Source

http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/b539b5e5a77ff5f5f46d06b3e1467f43

Temporal coverage

2005-06-23 - 2011-08-17

DOI

doi:10.6073/pasta/b539b5e5a77ff5f5f46d06b3e1467f43

Permanent URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/b539b5e5a77ff5f5f46d06b3e1467f43

Additional Files
knb-lter-sev.257.169578-metadata.html (79 kB)
Show full metadata
knb-lter-sev.257.169578-provenance.xml (3 kB)
Show provenance metadata
knb-lter-sev.257.169578-report.html (26 kB)
Show original LTER Network Data Portal ingest report
sev257_pdog_trapping_20131210.txt (39 kB)
Data in TXT format
Download

Following version knb-lter-sev.257.208279.

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