Soil Biogeochemistry Pacific Northwest

This dataset includes data files with soil, plant and nitrogen fixation rate data for the grassland plots studied along the Pacific Northwest gradient. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the impact of climatic stress (i.e. experimental warming and drought) on PNW grasslands are mediated by interactions between plant functional diversity and soil biogeochemical processes, including symbiotic nitrogen (N) fixation in legumes and free-living asymbiotic nitrogen fixation (ANF) by soil microorganisms. To test this hypothesis, we measured the response of plants and soils to three years of warming (+2.5ºC) and drought (-40% precipitation) in field experiments, replicated at three different sites across a ~520-km latitudinal gradient.