Effects of Fire and Precipitation on a Small Mammal Community in Shortgrass Prairie of the Southern Great Plains PDF Download

Author: Whitney J. Priesmeyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mammal populations
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Author: Mark J. Witecha
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mammal populations
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Author: Catherine H. Ream
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fire ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Author: Brianna N. Kirchner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blacklands (Tex.)
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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This study investigated effects of fire on vegetation and small mammals in a tallgrass blackland prairie remnant. At Leonhardt Prairie, vegetation and small mammals were monitored from February 2007 through May 2008 with a burn occurring Fall 2007. Pre-burn, dense litter and vegetative cover accommodated two dominant species, Baiomys taylori and Sigmodon hispidus, with a relative abundance (captures/100 trapnights) of 5.85 and 4.99, respectively. Post-burn, removal of vegetation led to an increase of Peromyscus maniculatus from a relative abundance of 0.12 pre-burn to 5.23 post-burn. Baiomys taylori and Sigmodon hispidus were not captured on burned sections for 7 months, though the unburned section maintained capture rates similar to pre-burn data. Shift in species composition has occurred from Baiomys taylori and Sigmodon hispidus to Peromyscus maniculatus, suggesting short-term fire response of small mammals in tallgrass prairies. This secondary successional cycle of 7 months suggests the prairie's natural fire frequency was high.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Author: Fritz L. Knopf
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475727038
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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The frontier images of America embrace endless horizons, majestic herds of native ungulates, and romanticized life-styles of nomadie peoples. The images were mere reflections of vertebrates living in harmony in an ecosystem driven by the unpre dictable local and regional effects of drought, frre, and grazing. Those effects, often referred to as ecological "disturbanees," are rather the driving forces on which species depended to create the spatial and temporal heterogeneity that favored ecological prerequisites for survival. Alandscape viewed by European descendants as monotony interrupted only by extremes in weather and commonly referred to as the "Great American Desert," this country was to be rushed through and cursed, a barrier that hindered access to the deep soils of the Oregon country, the rich minerals of California and Colorado, and the religious freedom sought in Utah. Those who stayed (for lack of resources or stamina) spent a century trying to moderate the ecological dynamics of Great Plains prairies by suppressing fires, planting trees and exotic grasses, poisoning rodents, diverting waters, and homogenizing the dynamies of grazing with endless fences-all creating bound an otherwise boundless vista. aries in Historically, travelers and settlers referred to the area of tallgrasses along the western edge of the deciduous forest and extending midway across Kansas as the "True Prairie. " The grasses thlnned and became shorter to the west, an area known then as the Great Plains.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Author: Kenneth F. Higgins
Publisher:
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Category : Fire ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Author: Whitney L. Behr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Grasslands can support high levels of biodiversity and provide numerous ecosystem services, but they have been widely degraded, often via loss of natural disturbance regimes. North American grasslands were once created and maintained by fire. In some cases, fire has been more important than climate in determining the distribution and extent of grasslands. Conservation of the biodiversity harbored by grasslands relies, in part, on ecological restoration of these habitats and the fire regimes that historically maintained them. In this dissertation, I examined the effects of prescribed fire on grassland plant species and plant communities of the southern Great Plains in the short-term (up to two years after fire) and longer-term (twelve years after fire). Cool-season prescribed burns (those conducted in January – March) were not sufficient to shift overall plant community composition (e.g., increase richness of native plant species or reduce cover of the invasive grass Bothriochloa ischaemum) in 10 sites distributed from central Texas to southern Oklahoma (Chapter 2). However, these fires did have measurable effects on eight individual forb species in the same sites (Chapter 3). In general, the eight forb species studied individually responded to the winter fire individualistically, but all three annual species increased their floral displays (flowers/m2) in the burned plots in the short term. Forb species that increased their floral display in burned areas did so via increased plant biomass (grams of dry aboveground biomass) or plant density (plants/m2). We found little evidence that these forb species shifted their resource allocation towards reproduction. In a separate study (Chapter 4), a prescribed fire conducted in July was sufficient to shift plant community composition in the short term, mostly by reducing the cover of the invasive grass B. ischaemum and increasing native species richness; the latter effect was likely the result of reducing B. ischaemum. In the same study, only the increases in native grass cover and richness were still detectable twelve years after the fire. Perhaps due to two additional cool-season fires across the entire site, B. ischaemum cover remained low twelve years after the fire in burned plots but unexpectedly had also decreased in unburned plots. The results from all three chapters supported our expectation that summer fires would be more effective than cool-season fires in changing the plant community composition, including controlling the invasive grass B. ischaemum. Interestingly, forb species were highly individualistic, from differences in their abundances among sites in the multi-site study (Chapter 3) to differences in their responses to fire (Chapter 4). These findings support conducting prescribed fires in summer months to control invasive grasses and to increase native plant species richness, and consequently conserve the biodiversity supported by grasslands in this region

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Disturbance (Ecological disturbances)
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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