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Patterns of nitrogen (N) accumulation and turnover in riparian systems in semi-arid regions are poorly understood, particularly in those ecosystems that lack substantial inputs from nitrogen fixing vegetation. We investigated sources and fluxes of N in chronosequences of riparian forests along the regulated Green River and the free-flowing Yampa River in semi-arid northwestern Colorado. Both rivers lack significant inputs from N-fixing vegetation. Total soil nitrogen increased through time along both rivers, at a rate of about 7.8 g N m(-2) year(-1) for years 10-70, and 2.7 g N m(-2)year(-1) from years 70-170. We found that the concentration of N in freshly deposited sediments could account for most of the soil...
In water-limited ecosystems, small rainfall events can have dramatic impacts on microbial activity and soil nutrient pools. Plant community phenology and life span also affect soil resources by determining the timing and quantity of plant nutrient uptake, storage, and release. Using the replacement of C3?C4 perennial grasses by the invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum as a case study, we investigated the influence of phenology and life span on pulse responses and sizes of soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools. We hypothesized that available and microbial C and N would respond to small rainfall events and that B. tectorum invasion would increase soil C and N pools by reducing inter-annual plant C and N storage...
During the 20th Century the flow of most rivers in the United States was regulated by diversions and dams, with major impacts on riparian forests. Few unregulated rivers remain to provide baseline information for assessing these impacts. We characterized patterns in riparian plant communities along chronosequences on the unregulated Yampa River and the regulated Green River in northwestern Colorado, examining patterns in plant species diversity in relation to the ages of floodplain terraces. On both rivers, mean plant species richness in cottonwood (Populus deltoides Marshall subsp. wislizenzii (Watson) Eckenwalder) dominated riparian forests declined by more than 50% from young sites (<20 years) to old upland terraces...
Bromus tectorum, a successful and damaging exotic annual grass throughout the western U.S., has also been a successful invader of C3-C4 perennial grasslands located within the low elevation, open ponderosa pine forests of Colorado's Front Range. Successful invasion can result in replacing a perennial grassland, which is active throughout most of the growing season, with an annual grassland, which is active only from early fall through early summer of the following year. To date, the results of studies that attempt to document how B. tectorum invasion into perennial grasslands changes soil nutrient and carbon (C) pools have been mixed, perhaps because most studies do not control for (1) daily and/or seasonal variation...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Journal Citation
The positive effect of disturbance on plant community invasibility is one of the more consistent results in invasion ecology. It is generally attributed to a coincident increase in available resources (due to the disturbance) that allows non-resident plant species to establish (Davis MA, Grime JP Thompson K, J Ecol 88:528?534, 2000). However, most research addressing this issue has been in artificial or highly modified plant communities. Our goal in this study was to investigate the interactive effects of resource availability and plant mortality disturbance on the invasion of natural plant communities. We conducted a series of experiments that examined the response of Bromus tectorum L., a highly invasive annual...