SGS-LTER Earthwatch - Organic Matter in Abandoned Fields in eastern Colorado, USA 1994-1995

This data package was produced by researchers
working on the Shortgrass Steppe Long Term
Ecological Research (SGS-LTER) Project,
administered at Colorado State University.
Long-term datasets and background information
(proposals, reports, photographs, etc.) on the
SGS-LTER project are contained in a comprehensive
project collection within the Digital Collections
of Colorado
(http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/R/?func=collections&collection_id=3429).
The data table and associated metadata document,
which is generated in Ecological Metadata
Language, may be available through other
repositories serving the ecological research
community and represent components of the larger
SGS-LTER project collection. Our research on abandoned fields at the CPER
has two aspects,vegetation recovery and soil
recovery. We wish to monitor these fields for the
tem of the LTER project (decades or centuries),
and to address some specific research questions.
Our questions are: 1. Does vegetation on
shortgrass steppe recover 55 years following
cultivation? Specifically, does Bouteloua
gracilis, the dominant shortgrass steppe species,
recover? Prior results indicated that B.
gracilis reovers on some fields, and does not on
others. The fields that do not are dominated by
buffalo grass. In this new work at the CPER, we
ask an additional question: 2. What
determines whether B. gracilis recovers?
3. Does soil organic matter recover
following abandonment? Specifically, do indices of
soil fertility such as nitrogen availability
recover? 4. Does small-scale patterning
associated with individual plants recover
following disturbance? 5. Does the rate
of soil recovery depend upon the rate of
vegetation recovery? Past results on the
Pawnee National Grasslands indicated that only
small amounts of organic matter had accumulated
following abandonment but that nitrogen
availability had recovered to its original levels
under B. gracilis plants on the abandoned fields.
Specifically, we are interested in whether it
makes a difference to soils if blue grama recovers
or not. Additional information and referenced materials can be found:
http://hdl.handle.net/10217/82140