Authors

Anne Cross

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

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.

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

knb-lter-sev.152.480570-metadata.html (146 kB)
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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

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