Methods in brief
During winter 1987, eight harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex rugosus)
nests at site 1, five harvester ant nests at site 2 and seven ant
nests at site 3 were randomly selected and systematically sampled.
At each nest, a 0.16 square meter quadrat frame was randomly
placed at the ant nest edge, a second 0.16 square meter quadrat
was also placed on the ant nest edge opposite to the first
quadrat. Two additional quadrat frames were placed 5 meters
distance from the two at the edge of the ant nests. These quadrats
represent the soil unmodified by the activity of the ants and
served as a reference.
On 24 June 1987, soil samples were collected from five ant nests
for each of the three sites. Organic matter content was determined
by total combustion in an electric muffle furnace at 600 C for 8
hours. The dataset contains the resulting percent (%) organic
matter in each sample. These measurements used the same soil
samples as used for water content measurements (EDI dataset
knb-lter-jrn.210368004).
Additional Files
An additional metadata file - ansorgan.dsd.txt - from the earlier
Jornada information management system is included and may contain
useful metadata.