Soil properties and plant functional group biomass, Emerald Lake, Kluane Lake Region, Yukon Territory, Canada, 2015

The effects of changes in composition in determining ecosystem properties may be determined by the identity of the plants, their respective biomass in the community, and also by the ability of the remaining vegetation to compensate for their loss. We used the graminoid removal treatment from a long-term (12 year) removal experiment to examine the role of graminoids in determining ecosystem properties and also the potential for biomass compensation by remaining species in a grassland in northern Canada. We conducted removals in both fertilized and non-fertilized environments to examine the context-dependency of graminoid effects. In the summer of 2015 (after 12 years of treatments) we sampled above-ground biomass of each functional group (as determined by allometry), soil physical properties (moisture, pH), soil nutrient content (Extractable organic carbon and total nitrogen, ammonium, nitrate and phosphate) and microbial properties (microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen, extracellular enzyme activity).