Since the mid-1980s, sagebrush rangelands in the Great Basin of the United States have experienced more frequent and larger wildfires. These fires affect livestock forage, the sagebrush/grasses/forbs mosaic that is important for many wildlife species (e.g., the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)), post-fire flammability and fire frequency. When a sagebrush, especially a Wyoming big...

The aim of this study was to determine the relative effects of landscape-scale management intensity, local management intensity and edge effect on diversity patterns of insect-pollinated vs. non-insect pollinated forbs in meadows and wheat fields. Nine landscapes were selected differing in percent intensively used agricultural area (IAA), each with a pair of organic and conventional winter whea...

Proper grazing management practices can generate corresponding compensatory effects on plant community production, which may reduce inter-annual variability of productivity in some grassland ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how grazing influences plant community attributes and the variability of standing crop. We examined the effects of sheep grazing at four stocking rate treatments [con...

Questions: How do fire frequency, tree canopy cover, and their interactions influence cover of grasses, forbs and understorey woody plants in oak savannas and woodlands? Location: Minnesota, USA. Methods: We measured plant functional group cover and tree canopy cover on permanent plots within a long-term prescribed fire frequency experiment and used hierarchical linear modeling to assess plant ...

this study aims to assess the effect of grazing intensity on vegetation structure, soil nutrient concentrations and soil physical properties. the study was carried out in steppe rangelands of saveh, markazi province, iran. four sites with four grazing intensities including very high, high, moderate and non-grazed with the same ecological conditions were selected. to study various vegetation and...

We examined species composition and diversity of vegetation and soil seed bank associated with different microhabitats in Mediterranean semiarid sand dune community, to identify which functional groups or species benefit from trampling, and to provide a basis for management. In this community microhabitats were found to significantly influence species abundance and biomass of dominant functiona...

We assessed the biomass production, biomass allocation patterns, height growth, and root airspace of seventeen wetland plant taxa, including two potentially invasive species, grown under high nutrient conditions and subjected to four hydrologic regimes: constant drawdown, cyclic flooding and drawdown, cyclic flooding and drought, and constant flooding for the duration of the experiment ( 10 wee...

Increasing attention in invasion biology is being paid to measuring and understanding the impacts of invasive species. For plant invasions, however, the impact of invasion on soil seed bank communities has been under-studied. At six sites in southern Germany, we investigated whether areas invaded by Solidago gigantea and Solidago canadensis experienced a reduction in seed bank species richness,...

Growth of herbaceous plants responds sensitively and rapidly to climate variability. Yet, little is known regarding how climate warming influences the growth of herbaceous plants, particularly in semi-arid sites. This contrasts with widely reported tree growth decline and even mortality in response to severe water deficits due to climate warming around the world. Here, we use the relatively nov...