Seedling recruitment is a critical driver of population dynamics and community assembly, yet we know little about functional traits that define different recruitment strategies. For the first time, we examined whether trait relatedness across germination and seedling stages allows the identification of general recruitment strategies which share core functional attributes...
Questions:
(1) What combinations of overlapping water and heat stress and herbivory disturbance gradients are associated with shifts in interactions between Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis (Artemisia) and herbaceous beneficiary species? (2) Do interactions between Artemisia and beneficiaries shift from competition to facilitation with increasing stress-disturbance where facilitation and competition are...
1. Seeding native plants is a key management practice to counter land degradation across
the globe, yet the majority of seeding efforts fail, limiting our ability to accelerate ecosystem
recovery.
2. Recruitment requires transitions through several seed and seedling stages, some of which
may have overriding influences on restoration outcomes....
If arid sagebrush ecosystems lack resilience to disturbances or resistance to annual invasives, then alternative successional states
dominated by annual invasives, especially cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), are likely after fuel treatments. We identified six
Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young) locations (152–381 mm precipitation) that
we...
Disturbances and their interactions play major roles in sagebrush (Artemisia spp. L.) community dynamics. Although impacts of some disturbances, most notably fire, have been quantified at the landscape level, some have been ignored and rarely are interactions between disturbances evaluated. We developed conceptual state-and-transition models for each of two broad...
Federal policies in the US strongly emphasize reducing hazardous fuels at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). However, these areas present restoration challenges as they often have exotic weeds, frequent human disturbance, and the presence of roads. Understanding seed banks is important in planning for desirable post-disturbance community conditions, developing integrated...
Annual grass invasion into shrub-dominated ecosystems is associated with changes in nutrient cycling that may alter nitrogen (N) limitation and retention. Carbon (C) applications that reduce plant-available N have been suggested to give native perennial vegetation a competitive advantage over exotic annual grasses, but plant community and N retention responses...
1. Ecosystem invasibility is determined by combinations of environmental variables, invader attributes, disturbance regimes, competitive abilities of resident species and evolutionary history between residents and disturbance regimes. Understanding the relative importance of each factor is critical to limiting future invasions and restoring ecosystems.
2. We investigated factors potentially controlling Bromus...