SGS-LTER Aboveground NPP on and off US Forest Service Burns on the Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, USA 1997-2004

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. Most investigators studying grasslands have
assumed that the low standing biomass of the SGS
created a system with a low probability of
carrying fire, and thus a minimal historical role
of fire. Nonetheless, there are years with
aboveground biomass equivalent to the mixed grass
prairie, and a high frequency of lightening
storms. Regardless of the historical role of fire
in SGS, there are new questions regarding its
utility in managing for the presence of the
threatened mountain plover, which only nests in
areas of low plant biomass. United States Forest
Service, Pawnee National Grassland recently
initiated a burning program in the mid 1990s to
address questions about using fire to increase
plover habitat; we have collected data on some of
these plots to investigate the influence of fire
on SGS vegetation. Several datasets were created
between 1999 and 2004 by SGS-LTER researchers,
including measurements of shrub and cactus
mortality rates, aboveground net primary
production, amounts of litter and standing dead,
and aboveground nitrogen dynamics in burned and
control plots in the western section of the Pawnee
National Grassland. Additional information and referenced materials can be found:
http://hdl.handle.net/10217/83326.