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Woody plant encroachment is a worldwide phenomenon in grassland and savanna systems whose consequence is often the development of an alternate woodland state. Theoretically, an alternate state may be associated with changes in system state variables (e.g., species composition) or abiotic parameter shifts (e.g., nutrient availability). When state-variable changes are cumulative, such as in woody plant encroachment, the probability of parameter shifts increases as system feedbacks intensify over time. Using a Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) design, we studied eight pairs of grassland sites undergoing various levels of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) encroachment to determine whether responses of flora and fauna to experimental redcedar removal differed according to the level of pretreatment redcedar cover. In the first year after removal, herbaceous plant species diversity and evenness, woody plant evenness, and invertebrate family richness increased linearly with pretreatment redcedar cover, whereas increases in small-mammal diversity and evenness were described by logarithmic trends. In contrast, increases in woody plant diversity and total biomass of terrestrial invertebrates were accentuated at levels of higher pretreatment cover. Tree removal also shifted small-mammal species composition toward a more grassland-associated assemblage. During the second year postremoval, increases in herbaceous plant diversity followed a polynomial trend, but increases in most other metrics did not vary along the pretreatment cover gradient. These changes were accompanied by extremely high growing-season precipitation, which may have homogenized floral and faunal responses to removal. Our results demonstrate that tree removal increases important community metrics among grassland flora and fauna within two years, with some responses to removal being strongly influenced by the stage of initial encroachment and modulated by climatic variability. Our results underscore the importance of decisive management for reversing the effects of woody plant encroachment in imperiled grassland ecosystems. 相似文献
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Ecologists are beginning to recognize the effect of heterogeneity on structure and function in arid and semiarid ecosystems.
Additionally, the influences of temperature on ecosystems are widely documented, but landscape temperature patterns and relationships
with vegetation are rarely reported in ecological studies. To better understand the importance of temperature patterns to
the conservation and restoration of native ecosystems, we designed an experiment to investigate relationships among soil surface
temperature, landscape heterogeneity, and grazing intensity. Grazing intensity did influence the vegetation structure and
composition. Heavy treatments had the greatest bare ground and the least vertical structure. Ungrazed treatments had the most
litter and live grass cover. However, average temperatures among the three grazing treatments were not different and ranged
less than 2°C during midday summer periods. The temperature difference between riparian and upland landscapes within grazing
treatments was 21°C. Landscape position (riparian vs. upland) did have a significant influence on soil surface temperature
and produced a variation in temperature 11 times greater than grazing intensities. Thermal heterogeneity did not differ among
grazing treatments. Lower soil surface temperatures (associated with riparian areas) may provide a critical thermal refuge
for many animals in arid and semiarid ecosystems on hot summer days, when air temperatures can exceed 37°C. Riparian zones,
specifically riparian vegetation, are an important component in ecosystem management. 相似文献
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