SGS-LTER Effects of water and nitrogen additions on carbon and nitrogen in shortgrass ecosystems on the Central Plains Experimental Range, Nunn, Colorado, USA 1997-2011, ARS Study Number 143

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. The objective of this research is to evaluate
the long-term response of shortgrass ecosystems to
additional water and nitrogen inputs. An
experiment was conducted during the IBP project
(1970-1975) in which water and nitrogen were
applied (Lauenroth et al. 1978, Dodd and Lauenroth
1979, Milchunas and Lauenroth 1995). While we
gained an enormous increment in our knowledge
about shortgrass ecosystems from this experiment
it raised as many questions as it answered. One of
the problems was that the treatments were very
high levels of nitrogen (100-150kg/ha N) and water
(600 mm/growing season) additions. Additional information and referenced materials can be found: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/85629.