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.本数据集涵盖沿太平洋西北梯度（Pacific Northwest gradient）开展研究的草原样地的土壤、植物及固氮速率相关数据文件。本研究旨在验证如下假说：气候胁迫（即模拟增温与干旱处理）对太平洋西北（PNW）草原的影响，由植物功能多样性与土壤生物地球化学过程之间的交互作用所介导，其中包含豆科植物的共生固氮（symbiotic nitrogen fixation）以及土壤微生物介导的自由生活非共生固氮（ANF）。为验证该假说，本研究在沿约520千米纬度梯度分布的3个独立样地中开展野外重复实验，测定了植物与土壤对为期3年的模拟增温（升温2.5℃）与降水减少40%的干旱处理的响应。