Chihuahuan Desert Grassland Research Articles

Effects of multiple mammalian herbivores and climate on grassland-shrubland transitions in the Chihuahuan Desert.

The replacement of grasses by shrubs or bare ground (xerification) is a primary form of landscape change in drylands globally with consequences for ecosystem services. The potential for wild herbivores to trigger or reinforce shrubland states may be underappreciated, however, and comparative analyses across herbivore taxa are sparse. We sought to clarify the relative effects of domestic cattle, native rodents, native lagomorphs, and exotic African oryx (Oryx gazella) on a Chihuahuan Desert grassland undergoing shrub encroachment. We then asked whether drought periods, wet season precipitation, or interspecific grass-shrub competition modified herbivore effects to alter plant cover, species diversity, or community composition. We established a long-term experiment with hierarchical herbivore exclosure treatments and surveyed plant foliar cover over 25 years. Cover of honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) proliferated, responding primarily to climate, and was unaffected by herbivore treatments. Surprisingly, cattle and African oryx exclusion had only marginal effects on perennial grass cover at their current densities. Native lagomorphs interacted with climate to limit perennial grass cover during wet periods. Native rodents strongly decreased plant diversity, decreased evenness, and altered community composition. Overall, we found no evidence of mammalian herbivores facilitating or inhibiting shrub encroachment, but native small mammals interacting with climate drove dynamics of herbaceous plant communities. Ongoing monitoring will determine whether increased perennial grass cover from exclusion of native lagomorphs and rodents slows the transition to a dense shrubland.

Long-term fertilization increases soil but not plant or microbial N in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland

Abstract. Although the negative consequences of increased nitrogen (N) supply for plant communities and soil chemistry are well known, most studies have focused on mesic grasslands, and the fate of added N in arid and semi-arid ecosystems remains unclear. To study the impacts of long-term increased N deposition on ecosystem N pools, we sampled a 26-year-long fertilization (10 g N m−2 yr−1) experiment in the northern Chihuahuan Desert at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) in New Mexico. To determine the fate of the added N, we measured multiple soil, microbial, and plant N pools in shallow soils at three time points across the 2020 growing season. We found small but significant increases with fertilization in soil-available NO3--N and NH4+-N, yet the soil microbial and plant communities do not appear to be taking advantage of the increased N availability, with no changes in biomass or N content in either community. However, there were increases in total soil N with fertilization, suggesting increases in microbial or plant N earlier in the experiment. Ultimately, the majority of the N added in this multi-decadal experiment was not found in the shallow soil or the microbial or plant community and is likely to have been lost from the ecosystem entirely.

Revisiting the bucket model: Long‐term effects of rainfall variability and nitrogen enrichment on net primary production in a desert grassland

Abstract The predicted intensification of the North American Monsoon is expected to alter growing season rainfall patterns in the southwestern United States. These patterns, which have historically been characterized by frequent small rain events, are anticipated to shift towards a more extreme precipitation regime consisting of fewer, but larger rain events. Furthermore, human activities are contributing to increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition throughout this dryland region. Alterations in rainfall size and frequency, along with changes in nitrogen availability, are likely to have significant consequences for above‐ground net primary production (ANPP) and plant community dynamics in drylands. The conceptual bucket model predicts that a shift towards fewer, but larger rain events could promote greater rates of ANPP in these regions by maintaining soil moisture availability above drought stress thresholds for longer periods during the growing season. However, only a few short‐term studies have tested this hypothesis, and none have explored the interaction between altered rainfall patterns and nitrogen enrichment. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a 14‐year rainfall addition and nitrogen fertilization experiment in a northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland to explore the long‐term impacts of changes in monsoon rainfall size and frequency, along with chronic nitrogen enrichment, on ANPP (measured as peak biomass) and plant community dynamics. Contrary to bucket model predictions, small frequent rain events promoted comparable rates of ANPP to large infrequent rain events in the absence of nitrogen enrichment. It was only when nitrogen limitation was alleviated that large infrequent rain events resulted in the greatest ANPP. Furthermore, we found that nitrogen enrichment had the greatest impact on plant community composition under the small frequent rainfall regime. Synthesis. Our long‐term field experiment highlights limitations of the bucket model by demonstrating that water and nitrogen availability sequentially limit dryland ecological processes. Specifically, our findings suggest that while water availability is the primary limiting factor for above‐ground net primary production in these ecosystems, nitrogen limitation becomes increasingly important when water is not limiting. Moreover, our findings reveal that small frequent rain events play an important but underappreciated role in driving dryland ecosystem dynamics.

Soil nematode assemblages respond to interacting environmental changes.

Multi-factor experiments suggest that interactions among environmental changes commonly influence biodiversity and community composition. However, most field experiments manipulate only single factors. Soil food webs are critical to ecosystem health and may be particularly sensitive to interactions among environmental changes that include soil warming, eutrophication, and altered precipitation. Here, we asked how environmental changes interacted to alter soil nematode communities in a northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland. Factorial manipulations of nitrogen, winter rainfall, and nighttime warming matched predictions for regional environmental change. Warming reduced nematode diversity by 25% and genus-level richness by 32%, but declines dissipated with additional winter rain, suggesting that warming effects occurred via drying. Interactions between precipitation and nitrogen also altered nematode community composition, but only weakly affected total nematode abundance, indicating that most change involved reordering of species abundances. Specifically, under ambient precipitation, nitrogen fertilizer reduced bacterivores by 68% and herbivores by 73%, but did not affect fungivores. In contrast, under winter rain addition, nitrogen fertilization increased bacterivores by 95%, did not affect herbivores, and doubled fungivore abundance. Rain can reduce soil nitrogen availability and increase turnover in the microbial loop, potentially promoting the recovery of nematode populations overwhelmed by nitrogen eutrophication. Nematode communities were not tightly coupled to plant community composition and may instead track microbes, including biocrusts or decomposers. Our results highlight the importance of interactions among environmental change stressors for shaping the composition and function of soil food webs in drylands.

Demography and dispersal at a grass‐shrub ecotone: A spatial integral projection model for woody plant encroachment

AbstractThe encroachment of woody plants into grasslands is a global phenomenon with implications for biodiversity and ecosystem function. Understanding and predicting the pace of expansion and the underlying processes that control it are key challenges in the study and management of woody encroachment. Theory from spatial population biology predicts that the occurrence and speed of expansion should depend sensitively on the nature of conspecific density dependence. If fitness is maximized at the low‐density encroachment edge, then shrub expansion should be “pulled” forward. However, encroaching shrubs have been shown to exhibit positive feedbacks, whereby shrub establishment modifies the environment in ways that facilitate further shrub recruitment and survival. In this case there may be a fitness cost to shrubs at low density causing expansion to be “pushed” from behind the leading edge. We studied the spatial dynamics of creosotebush (Larrea tridentata), which has a history of encroachment into Chihuahuan Desert grasslands over the past century. We used demographic data from observational censuses and seedling transplant experiments to test the strength and direction of density dependence in shrub fitness along a gradient of shrub density at the grass–shrub ecotone. We also used seed‐drop experiments and wind data to construct a mechanistic seed‐dispersal kernel, then connected demography and dispersal data within a spatial integral projection model (SIPM) to predict the dynamics of shrub expansion. Contrary to expectations based on potential for positive feedbacks, the shrub encroachment wave is “pulled” by maximum fitness at the low‐density front. However, the predicted pace of expansion was strikingly slow (ca. 8 cm/year), and this prediction was supported by independent resurveys of the ecotone showing little to no change in the spatial extent of shrub cover over 12 years. Encroachment speed was acutely sensitive to seedling recruitment, suggesting that this population may be primed for pulses of expansion under conditions that are favorable for recruitment. Our integration of observations, experiments, and modeling reveals not only that this ecotone is effectively stalled under current conditions but also why that is so and how that may change as the environment changes.

Temporal Effects of Monsoon Rainfall Pulses on Plant Available Nitrogen in a Chihuahuan Desert Grassland

AbstractDrylands are often characterized by a pulse dynamics framework in which episodic rain events trigger brief pulses of biological activity and resource availability that regulate primary production. In the northern Chihuahuan Desert, growing season precipitation typically comes from monsoon rainstorms that stimulate soil microbial processes like decomposition, releasing inorganic nitrogen needed by plant processes. Compared to microbes, plants require greater amounts of soil moisture, typically from larger monsoon storms predicted to become less frequent and more intense in the future. Yet field‐based studies linking rainfall pulses with soil nutrient dynamics are rare. Consequently, little is known about how changes in rainfall patterns may affect plant available nitrogen in dryland soils, particularly across temporal scales. We measured daily and seasonal responses of soil inorganic nitrogen and related parameters to experimentally applied small frequent and large infrequent rain events throughout a summer growing season in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland. Contrary to long‐standing theories around resource pulse dynamics in drylands, nitrogen availability did not pulse following experimental rain events. Moreover, large infrequent events resulted in significantly less plant available nitrogen despite causing distinct pulses of increased soil moisture availability that persisted for several days. Overall, nitrogen availability increased over the growing season, especially following small frequent rain events that also stimulated some microbial ecoenzymatic activities. Our results suggest that projected changes in climate to fewer, larger rain events could significantly impact primary production in desert grasslands by decreasing plant available nitrogen when soil moisture is least limiting to plant growth.

Belowground responses to altered precipitation regimes in two semi-arid grasslands

Predicted climate change extremes, such as severe or prolonged drought, may considerably impact carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling in water-limited ecosystems. However, we lack a clear and mechanistic understanding of how extreme climate change events impact ecosystem processes belowground. This study investigates the effects of five years of reoccurring extreme growing season drought (66% reduction, extreme drought treatment) and two-month delay in monsoon precipitation (delayed monsoon treatment) on belowground productivity and biogeochemistry in two geographically adjacent semi-arid grasslands: Chihuahuan Desert grassland dominated by Bouteloua eriopoda and Great Plains grassland dominated by B. gracilis. After five years, extreme drought reduced belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) in the Chihuahuan Desert grassland but not in the Great Plains grassland. Across both grasslands, extreme drought increased soil pH and available soil nutrients nitrate and phosphate. The delayed monsoon treatment reduced BNPP in both grasslands. However, while available soil nitrate decreased in the Chihuahuan Desert grassland, the delayed monsoon treatment overall had little effect on soil ecosystem properties. Extreme drought and delayed monsoon treatments did not significantly impact soil microbial biomass, exoenzyme potentials, or soil C stocks relative to ambient conditions. Our study demonstrates that soil microbial biomass and exoenzyme activity in semi-arid grasslands are resistant to five years of extreme and prolonged growing season drought despite changes to soil moisture, belowground productivity, soil pH, and nutrient availability.

Woody-plant encroachment: Precipitation, herbivory, and grass-competition interact to affect shrub recruitment.

Woody-plant encroachment is a global phenomenon that has been affecting the southwestern United States since the late 1800s. Drought, overgrazing, herbivory, and competition between grasses and shrub seedlings have been hypothesized as the main drivers of shrub establishment. However, there is limited knowledge about the interactions among these drivers. Using a rainfall manipulation system and various herbivore exclosures, we tested hypotheses about how precipitation (PPT), competition between grasses and shrub seedlings, and predation affect the germination and first-year survival of mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), a shrub that has encroached in Southern Great Plains and Chihuahuan Desert grasslands. We found that mesquite germination and survival (1) increased with increasing PPT, then saturated at about the mean growing season PPT level, (2) that competition between grasses and shrub seedlings had no effect on either germination or survival, and (3) that herbivory by small mammals decreased seedling establishment and survival, while ant granivory showed no effect. In addition to its direct positive effect on survival, PPT had an indirect negative effect via increasing small mammal activity. Current models predict a decrease in PPT in the southwestern United States with increased frequency of extreme events. The non-linear nature of PPT effects on Mesquite recruitment suggests asymmetric responses, wherein drought has a relatively greater negative effect than the positive effect of wet years. Indirect effects of PPT, through its effects on small mammal abundance, highlight the importance of accounting for interactions between biotic and abiotic drivers of shrub encroachment. This study provides quantitative basis for developing tools that can inform effective shrub management strategies in grasslands and savannas.

Disturbance to biocrusts decreased cyanobacteria, N-fixer abundance, and grass leaf N but increased fungal abundance.

Interactions between plants and soil microbes influence plant nutrient transformations, including nitrogen (N) fixation, nutrient mineralization, and resource exchanges through fungal networks. Physical disturbances to soils can disrupt soil microbes and associated processes that support plant and microbial productivity. In low resource drylands, biological soil crusts ("biocrusts") occupy surface soils and house key autotrophic and diazotrophic bacteria, non-vascular plants, or lichens. Interactions among biocrusts, plants, and fungal networks between them are hypothesized to drive carbon and nutrient dynamics; however, comparisons across ecosystems are needed to generalize how soil disturbances alter microbial communities and their contributions to N pools and transformations. To evaluate linkages among plants, fungi, and biocrusts, we disturbed all unvegetated surfaces with human foot trampling twice yearly from 2013-2019 in dry conditions in cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts in the Chihuahuan Desert grassland and shrubland ecosystems. After 5 years, disturbance decreased the abundances of cyanobacteria (especially Microcoleus steenstrupii clade) and N-fixers (Scytonema sp., and Schizothrix sp.) by >77% and chlorophyll a by up to 55% but, conversely, increased soil fungal abundance by 50% compared with controls. Responses of root-associated fungi differed between the two dominant plant species and ecosystem types, with a maximum of 80% more aseptate hyphae in disturbed than in control plots. Although disturbance did not affect 15 N tracer transfer from biocrusts to the dominant grass, Bouteloua eriopoda, disturbance increased available soil N by 65% in the shrubland, and decreased leaf N of B. eriopoda by up to 16%, suggesting that, although rapid N transfer during peak production was not affected by disturbance, over the long-term plant nutrient content was disrupted. Altogether, the shrubland may be more resilient to detrimental changes due to disturbance than grassland, and these results demonstrated that disturbances to soil microbial communities have the potential to cause substantial changes in N pools by reducing and reordering biocrust taxa.

Effects of Precipitation and Livestock Grazing on Foliage Foraging Ants in a Chihuahuan Desert Grassland

We examined the relationship between seasonal livestock grazing (late summer and late winter) and the abundance of two ant species, Dorymyrmex insana and Forelius pruniosus, on three types of plants (mesquite shrubs, snakeweed sub-shrubs, and mixed grasses) dominated by black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda). Stocking rates were adjusted to remove 75% of the available forage. Since Chihuahuan Desert grasslands are not in transition to shrublands, the grasses and some herbaceous plants are the only available forage. We hypothesized that neither rainfall nor cattle grazing would affect the abundance of these ants on mesquite (Prosipis glandulosa) or snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae). Linear regressions of monsoon rainfall on mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) produced an r2 nearly equal to that with the annual precipitation. Monsoon rainfall on the evergreen sub-shrub, Gutierrezia sarothrae, resulted in June-July rainfall accounting for 47% - 83% of the variation in densities of D. insana on snakeweed. The number of D. insana was more than double the number of F. pruinosus on grasses, mesquite, and snakeweed. There were significant reductions in the abundance of F. pruinosus on the grass in the grazed plots; each year the plots were grazed. There were no significant effects of grazing on the abundance of either of the ant species sampled from G. sarothrae canopies. There were significantly fewer D. insana on mesquite in summer grazed plots than on P. glandulosa in winter grazed and ungrazed plots in the second and third years of grazing. Pre-grazing effects were compromised by the high annual (more than double) precipitation.

Sensitivity of soil organic matter to climate and fire in a desert grassland

Drylands contain a third of the organic carbon stored in global soils; however, the long-term dynamics of soil organic carbon in drylands remain poorly understood relative to dynamics of the vegetation carbon pool. We examined long-term patterns in soil organic matter (SOM) against both climate and prescribed fire in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland in central New Mexico, USA. SOM concentration was estimated by loss-on-ignition from soils at 0–20 cm depth each spring and fall for 25 years (1989–2014) in unburned desert grassland and from 2003 to 2014 following a prescribed fire. SOM concentration did not have a long-term trend but fluctuated seasonally at both burned and unburned sites, ranging from a minimum of 0.9% to a maximum of 3.3%. SOM concentration declined nonlinearly in wet seasons and peaked in dry seasons. These long-term results contrast not only with the positive relationships between aboveground net primary production and precipitation for this region, but also with previous reports that wetter sites have more SOM across drylands globally, suggesting that space is not a good substitute for time in predicting dryland SOM dynamics. We suggest that declines in SOM in wet periods are caused by increased soil respiration, runoff, leaching, and/or soil erosion. In addition to tracking natural variability in climate, SOM concentration also decreased 14% following prescribed fire, a response that magnified over time and has persisted for nearly a decade due to the slow recovery of primary production. Our results document the surprisingly dynamic nature of soil organic matter and its high sensitivity to climate and fire in a dry grassland ecosystem characteristic of the southwestern USA.

An open-source approach to characterizing Chihuahuan Desert vegetation communities using object-based image analysis

Methodsfor quantifying vegetative cover across landscapes have, until recently, been limited to ground-based surveys or remote sensing via satellites or aircraft, both of which can limit the spatial scale of resulting data. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) can efficiently collect high-resolution sub-decimeter imagery of landscapes; geographic, object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) of the collected imagery can then be used to estimate vegetation cover. To date, few researchers have utilized open-source programs for GEOBIA. We developed GEOBIA methods in the open-source Program R to analyze visible spectrum UAS imagery from four sites in the Chihuahuan Desert of North America. These desert grasslands are difficult to quantify due to the patchiness of ground cover at small scales (e.g. <1 m) and the rarity of shrubs on the landscape. We used site-specific training data and multiple segmentation parameters to create vegetative and shrub cover data layers at a 15 cm resolution. We report overall accuracies of 77.2%–88.8% for vegetation classification and 95.7%–99.2% for shrub classification. Our work is some of the first to use open-source GEOBIA in grasslands and provides objective, reproducible data layers of desert vegetation, particularly shrubs, at the spatial scale necessary to inform management and conservation of Chihuahuan Desert grassland communities.

Nutrient additions have direct and indirect effects on biocrust biomass in a long-term Chihuahuan Desert grassland experiment

Anthropogenic activities have greatly affected some of the global biogeochemical cycles, including the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles. This alteration of nutrients has significantly impacted ecosystems around the globe. Arid ecosystems may be particularly vulnerable to changes in nutrient availability, in addition to their frequent limitation by water availability. We conducted a nutrient-fertilization experiment with an emphasis on the cover of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) in the Chihuahuan Desert. We manipulated N, P, and Potassium (K) in a full-factorial design. We visually estimated biocrust cover and fluorometrically measured chlorophyll a as an index of biocrust abundance. We found that there were significant interaction effects of N*P and N*K as well as significant main effects of N and P on chlorophyll a. Results from a path analysis suggest that both N and P had direct positive effects on aboveground vascular plant production and direct negative effects on chlorophyll a. There were also indirect negative effects on biocrust cover and chlorophyll a by vascular plant cover. Overall, nutrient additions had a direct positive effect on vascular plant cover, which in turn had a negative impact on biocrust cover. This indicates a possible mechanism for inter-taxon competition under conditions of increased nutrient availability.

Press–pulse interactions and long‐term community dynamics in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland

AbstractQuestionsReordering of dominant species is an important mechanism of community response to global environmental change. We asked how wildfire (a pulse event) interacts with directional changes in climate (environmental presses) to affect plant community dynamics in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland.LocationSevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, Socorro County, New Mexico, USA.MethodsVegetation cover by species was measured twice each year from 1989 to 2019 along two permanently located 400‐m long line intercept transects, one in Chihuahuan Desert grassland, and the second in the ecotone between Chihuahuan Desert and Great Plains grasslands. Trends in community structure were plotted over time, and climate sensitivity functions were used to predict how changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) affected vegetation dynamics.ResultsCommunity composition was undergoing gradual change in the absence of disturbance in the ecotone and desert grassland. These changes were related to the reordering of abundances between two foundation grasses, Bouteloua eriopoda and B. gracilis, that together account for &gt;80% of above‐ground primary production. However, reordering varied over time in response to wildfire (a pulse) and changes in the PDO (a press). Community dynamics were initially related to the warm and cool phases of the PDO, but in the ecotone these relationships changed following wildfire, which reset the system.ConclusionSpecies reordering is an important component of community dynamics in response to ecological presses. However, reordering is a complex, non‐linear process in response to ecological presses that may change over time and interact with pulse disturbances.

Predicting changes in bee assemblages following state transitions at North American dryland ecotones

Drylands worldwide are experiencing ecosystem state transitions: the expansion of some ecosystem types at the expense of others. Bees in drylands are particularly abundant and diverse, with potential for large compositional differences and seasonal turnover across ecotones. To better understand how future ecosystem state transitions may influence bees, we compared bee assemblages and their seasonality among sites at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (NM, USA) that represent three dryland ecosystem types (and two ecotones) of the southwestern U.S. (Plains grassland, Chihuahuan Desert grassland, and Chihuahuan Desert shrubland). Using passive traps, we caught bees during two-week intervals from March–October, 2002–2014. The resulting dataset included 302 bee species and 56 genera. Bee abundance, composition, and diversity differed among ecosystems, indicating that future state transitions could alter bee assemblage composition in our system. We found strong seasonal bee species turnover, suggesting that bee phenological shifts may accompany state transitions. Common species drove the observed trends, and both specialist and generalist bee species were indicators of ecosystem types or months; these species could be sentinels of community-wide responses to future shifts. Our work suggests that predicting the consequences of global change for bee assemblages requires accounting for both within-year and among-ecosystem variation.

Habitat and space use of wintering Sprague's Pipits (Anthus spragueii) in northern Mexico

Understanding home range size and habitat preferences is an important component of monitoring species in steep decline. Sprague's Pipit (Anthus spragueii) is a declining grassland specialist with a substantial portion of its population wintering in the highly threatened grasslands of the Chihuahuan Desert. We radio-tagged and tracked 10 wintering pipits between 2014 and 2017 at 3 sites across northern Mexico to generate baseline home range estimates and habitat preferences on their wintering grounds. We found that mean home range and core-use area size with 95% and 50% kernel density estimators were 11.4 ha and 2.4 ha, respectively, almost twice as large as some other grassland specialist passerines. Two birds left the study area and one individual shifted its home range 1.3 km after 20 d of monitoring, indicating that some individuals are flexible in their space use strategies. Within their home ranges, pipits selected grasslands with more bare ground and less “other cover” (litter, duff, animal excrement, and rocks) than what was available on the landscape. We found no relationship at the microhabitat scale between pipits and grass height nor shrub cover and heights, which in previous studies have been shown to influence habitat selection at larger scales. These findings may reflect different habitat use, diet, and predator avoidance strategies than other grassland passerines that select for denser grass cover during winter in the Chihuahuan Desert and highlight the importance of structurally heterogeneous grasslands. For this reason, strategies to manage and conserve Chihuahuan Desert grasslands and its avifauna must consider the diverse habitat and area needs of grassland birds to be effective.

Soil–litter mixing and microbial activity mediate decomposition and soil aggregate formation in a sandy shrub-invaded Chihuahuan Desert grassland

Drylands account globally for 30% of terrestrial net primary production and 20% of soil organic carbon. Present ecosystem models under predict litter decay in drylands, limiting assessments of biogeochemical cycling at multiple scales. Overlooked decomposition drivers, such as soil–litter mixing (SLM), may account for part of this model-measurement disconnect. We documented SLM and decomposition in relation to the formation of soil-microbial films and microbial extracellular enzyme activity (EEA) in the North American Chihuahuan Desert by placing mesh bags containing shrub (Prosopis glandulosa) foliar litter on the soil surface within contrasting vegetation microsites. Mass loss (in terms of k, the decay constant) was best described by the degree of SLM and soil-microbial film cover. EEA was greatest during periods of rapid litter decomposition and associated SLM. Soil-microbial film cover on litter surfaces increased over time and was greater in bare ground microsites (50% litter surface area covered) compared to shrub and grass microsites (37 and 33% covered, respectively). Soil aggregates that formed in association with decomposing leaf material had organic C and N concentrations 1.5–2× that of local surface soils. Micrographs of soil aggregates revealed a strong biotic component in their structure, suggesting that microbial decomposition facilitates aggregate formation and their C and N content. Decomposition drivers in arid lands fall into two major categories, abiotic and biotic, and it is challenging to ascertain their relative importance. The temporal synchrony between surface litter mass loss, EEA, biotic film development, and aggregate formation observed in this study supports the hypothesis that SLM enhances decomposition on detached litter by promoting conditions favorable for microbial processes. Inclusion of interactions between SLM and biological drivers will improve the ability of ecosystem models to predict decomposition rates and dynamics in drylands.

Social–ecological dynamics of change and restoration attempts in the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands of Janos Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

Shrub encroachment and declining grass production are widespread throughout the grasslands and savannas of the Mexico–US borderlands, with negative consequences for ecosystem services, livestock production, and native biodiversity. The problem suggests a complex interaction of social and ecological drivers that are not well understood. Using the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands of the Janos Biosphere Reserve of northern Mexico as a case study, we sought to understand the social–ecological context that shaped landscape change. Our approach included a synthesis of the historical literature and interviews with local residents, with the goal of facilitating long-term grassland restoration. Findings indicate that recent changes in Chihuahuan Desert grasslands are likely related to the co-occurrence of heavy grazing, fire suppression, and the elimination of key species, including prairie dogs and native ungulates. Local residents widely perceive both fire and prairie dogs to be destructive to grasslands and livelihoods. Over the last 50 years, evolving land tenure policies have fragmented the landscape into smaller parcels which typically produce an insufficient livelihood from cattle despite high stocking rates. Declining cattle profitability has motivated the sale and conversion of rangelands to more profitable croplands irrigated with groundwater. Since the founding of the Janos Biosphere Reserve in 2009, universities, local cattle operators, conservation organizations, and federal agencies have begun collaborating on restoration activities. While complete restoration of grasslands is unlikely, progress appears possible largely because of the willingness of local residents to try new management practices that may improve their ability to benefit from the land.

The influence of seasonal precipitation and grass competition on 20 years of forb dynamics in northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland

AbstractAimsIn arid grasslands forbs represent a large component of species diversity and provide a key resource for pollinators and consumers. However, low abundances and high temporal variability make it challenging to successfully predict forb presence and abundance from 1 yr to the next. In this study we: (1) characterize patterns of semi‐arid forb diversity and abundance over time; (2) determine the relative importance of direct vs indirect (via grass competition) effects of precipitation on forb richness and abundance; and (3) separate the effect of precipitation timing on forb community composition from the effects of precipitation amount and season.LocationSemi‐arid grassland, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, Socorro County, central New Mexico, USA.MethodsWe analysed forb dynamics along two 400‐m long line‐intercept transects in response to inter‐annual and seasonal precipitation variability and abundance of perennial grasses using a unique 20‐yr species composition data set from ungrazed native grassland in the northern Chihuahuan Desert.ResultsForb richness and cover were significantly positively associated with precipitation across seasons. Total richness was high across the time series but substantially lower within any given year. A direct, positive effect of precipitation overrode any potential negative, indirect effect via grass competition. Although aggregate forb responses were strongly linked with precipitation, individual species responses were highly variable and generally not linked with either precipitation timing or season.ConclusionsIn the hotter, drier climate predicted by meteorological models for the US southwest, forbs may be negatively impacted if winter moisture decreases and monsoon precipitation becomes more variable. On the other hand, the flexibility exhibited by forbs in germination and establishment throughout the growing season may help buffer some common species to increased inter‐annual precipitation variability.

Press-pulse interactions: effects of warming, N deposition, altered winter precipitation, and fire on desert grassland community structure and dynamics.

Global environmental change is altering temperature, precipitation patterns, resource availability, and disturbance regimes. Theory predicts that ecological presses will interact with pulse events to alter ecosystem structure and function. In 2006, we established a long-term, multifactor global change experiment to determine the interactive effects of nighttime warming, increased atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition, and increased winter precipitation on plant community structure and aboveground net primary production (ANPP) in a northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland. In 2009, a lightning-caused wildfire burned through the experiment. Here, we report on the interactive effects of these global change drivers on pre- and postfire grassland community structure and ANPP. Our nighttime warming treatment increased winter nighttime air temperatures by an average of 1.1°C and summer nighttime air temperature by 1.5°C. Soil N availability was 2.5 times higher in fertilized compared with control plots. Average soil volumetric water content (VWC) in winter was slightly but significantly higher (13.0% vs. 11.0%) in plots receiving added winter rain relative to controls, and VWC was slightly higher in warmed (14.5%) compared with control (13.5%) plots during the growing season even though surface soil temperatures were significantly higher in warmed plots. Despite these significant treatment effects, ANPP and plant community structure were highly resistant to these global change drivers prior to the fire. Burning reduced the cover of the dominant grasses by more than 75%. Following the fire, forb species richness and biomass increased significantly, particularly in warmed, fertilized plots that received additional winter precipitation. Thus, although unburned grassland showed little initial response to multiple ecological presses, our results demonstrate how a single pulse disturbance can interact with chronic alterations in resource availability to increase ecosystem sensitivity to multiple drivers of global environmental change.