EDI Staging Environment
Local and regional-scale processes interact to govern the assembly, diversity and functioning of ecological communities. Evaluating the interplay of these differently-scaled processes in the regulation of ecological systems is a challenging problem, but is crucial towards understanding and predicting the potential effects of accelerated human activity on biological diversity and ecosystem sustainability. Since 2000, two long-term field experiments have been underway in grasslands of eastern Kansas to investigate the interplay of soil resource availability, species interactions and regional processes governing plant secondary succession, community assembly, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning. Both experiments involve manipulations of soil nutrients in permanent grassland study plots and employ multi-species seed addition treatments to evaluate the contribution of dispersal limitation and regional constraints on local species pools to the regulation of plant community dynamics.
Old-field succession experiment, previously funded by the National Science Foundation, was initiated in 2001 in a section of the abandoned hay field that was sprayed with herbicide, plowed and disked prior to the start of the study to investigate plant community dynamics in the context of old-field succession initiated on bare soil. The experimental design involves factorial experimental gradients of nitrogen (N) supply (four levels of N fertilization), phosphorus (P) supply (two levels of P fertilization) and plant propagule input achieved by adding seeds of 50+ native and naturalized species to half of the study plots. With annual sampling this experiment allows us to examine old-field succession and community assembly unfolding along gradients of N and P fertilization and under conditions of ambient and experimentally-enriched species pools.
EDI is a collaboration between the University of New Mexico and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Center for Limnology:
