Fire and Grazing in the Tallgrass Prairie: Contingent Effects on Nitrogen Budgets

Abstract

Fire and grazing occur together in many of the world's grasslands, but their effects on nutrient cycling have usually been studied as if they acted separately. We hypothesized that grazing by large herbivores results in conservation of nitrogen that would otherwise be lost from burned grasslands. We tested this hypothesis in a series of experiments on burned and unburned tallgrass prairie grazed by cattle. We manipulated grazing using exclosures and mowing. Combustion losses of N from ungrazed plots (1.8 g°m—2°yr—1) burned in the spring were double those from similarly burned, grazed plots (0.9 g°m—2°yr—1). These losses represented about half of the preburn, aboveground stocks of N. The magnitude of N loss was proportional to the standing crop biomass available for combustion. Fire temperatures and energy release were reduced by grazing. We used mowing to simulate locally heavy grazing in patches. In the absence of burning, mowing patches increased the likelihood that a patch would be regrazed and caused persistent reductions in the residual biomass remaining in a patch at the end of the growing season. Mowing did not influence patch utilization or residual biomass when pastures were burned. Thus, the effects of fire on grassland N budgets were modified by grazing, and the effects of grazing on the patch structure of grasslands were modified by fire. We conclude that accurately predicting volatile losses of nutrients from grassland ecosystems resulting from biomass burning may depend on understanding effects of grazing.