How does fire and grazing heterogeneity impacts stability and communities across trophic levels?
Frequent fire in tallgrass prairie is important to help maintain a grassland state, while grazing promotes biodiversity. However, annual burning and grazing may negatively impact communities and ecosystem functions by homogenizing the landscape. I am using datasets spanning 10 years and multiple communities (birds, grasshoppers and plants) to address how landscape heterogeneity of fire and grazing in the context of Patch-burn grazing management impacts stability, biodiversity and spatial heterogeneity.
How does fire and grazing regimes impact carbon dynamics?
Fire and grazing are important drivers that shapes the structure and function of grassland ecosystems. The frequency and intensity of these drivers could alter how grasslands are storing carbon and also exchanging carbon with the atmosphere. I am using a custom chamber attached to a photosynthesis unit to estimate gross primary production. ecosystem respiration, and net ecosystem exchange. I am also estimating aboveground and belowground carbon pools to assess how these drivers are impacting carbon storage.
How does nitrogen addition alter carbon fluxes and pools?
Increased nitrogen addition tends to decrease biodiversity and alter ecosystem processes. Particularly, it reduces root to shoot ratio by increasing shoot/aboveground biomass. This may be disadvantageous for long-term carbon storage in ecosystems where frequent fire removes aboveground biomass, resulting in carbon loss to the atmosphere. I leveraged multiple nutrient experiments that have had nitrogen addition for at least 10 years to answer this question.
