Date
2011
Abstract
Vegetation throughout the southwestern United States has changed from perennial grassland to woody shrubland over the past century. Previous studies on the development of 'islands of fertility' focused primarily on only the most limiting, plant-essential element, soil nitrogen (N). The research presented here addressed the question of whether other plant-essential elements, namely phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), showed similar concentration gradients under the desert shrub Larrea tridentata (creosotebush). It also examined whether the spatial distribution of N, P, and K differed from that of essential, but non-limiting nutrients, namely calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S), and non-essential elements, namely sodium (Na), chloride (Cl), and fluoride (F). Within adjacent grassland and shrubland plots, surface soils were collected under and between vegetation and analyzed for a suite of soil nutrients. Soil nutrient distribution followed a uniform pattern that mirrored the spatial homogeneity of bunchgrasses in the grassland, but followed a patchy distribution that mirrored the spatial heterogeneity of individual shrubs in the shrubland. The main differences were that in the grassland, all elements were uniformly distributed, but in the shrubland the plant-essential elements, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, were concentrated under the shrub canopy, and the non-limiting and non-essential elements were either concentrated in the intershrub spaces or were equally concentrated under shrubs and in the interspaces. Our results show how vegetation shifts from grassland to shrubland contribute to long-term, widespread change in the structure and function of desert ecosystems.
Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/1928/30079
Other Identifier
SEV152
Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) Identifier
knb-lter-sev.152.480570
Document Type
Dataset
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).
Publisher
SEV LTER, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131
Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be
Temporal coverage
1989-01-01
Spatial coverage
Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 58Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 55Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 53Location: Deep Well Areasiteid: 50Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 51Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 52Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 56Location: Five Points Areasiteid: 57
DOI
doi:10.6073/pasta/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be
Permanent URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be
Recommended Citation
Cross, Anne (2011): Soil Nutrient Distributions in Chihuahuan Desert Grasslands and Shrublands at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico (1989). Long Term Ecological Research Network. http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be
Show full metadata
knb-lter-sev.152.480570-provenance.xml (3 kB)
Show provenance metadata
knb-lter-sev.152.480570-report.html (28 kB)
Show original LTER Network Data Portal ingest report
sev152_crossions_20121024.txt (33 kB)
Data in TXT format
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/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be, and may be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/fb181a7416587e2aae807396d03399be. 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.