Grasses and grassland ecology

Grassland Ecology 14

• Grasslands are one of Earth’s major biomes and the native vegetation of up to 40 % of Earth’s terrestrial surface. Grasslands occur on every continent except Antarctica, are ecologically and economically important, and provide critical ecosystem goods and services at local, regional, and global scales. • Grasslands are surprisingly diverse and difficult to define. Although grasses and other g...

Establishing a grassland signature in veins: 18O in the leaf water of C3 and C4 grasses.

We show that 18O evaporative enrichment of bulk leaf water in grass species can be significantly more enriched than predicted by the Craig-Gordon model, with C4 grasses considerably more enriched than C3 grasses. Our results suggest that the unanticipated 18O leaf water enrichment of grasses is attributable to the progressive evaporative enrichment along parallel veins (a function of both leaf ...

Mid-Spring Burning Reduces Spotted Knapweed and Increases Native Grasses during a Michigan Experimental Grassland Establishment

C3 woody plant expansion in a C4 grassland: are grasses and shrubs functionally distinct?

The expansion of C(3) shrubs into C(4)-dominated tallgrass prairies represents a fundamental shift in growth-form dominance accompanied by changes in resource acquisition and use. We assessed these changes by comparing the ecophysiological traits of the dominant C(4) grass Andropogon gerardii, with traits of three C(3) invasive shrub species, Cornus drummondii, Prunus americana, and Rhus glabra...

Spatial Variation in Remnant Grasses After a Grassland-to-Shrubland State Change: Implications for Restoration

Around the world rangelands that have been degraded, such as historical desert grasslands now dominated by woody shrubs, are resistant to restoration efforts. The goal of this descriptive research was to examine the potential for black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda [Torr.] Torr.) recovery by remnant plants in a degraded area as a function of plant location across a landscape. Our objectives were 1)...