When should rain fall?: how the timing of large storms impacts arid grasslands
Date
2017
Authors
Post, Alison, author
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Abstract
For the Southwestern United States, climate change models forecast longer droughts broken by fewer, larger rainfall events. While drought has been well-studied in semi-arid grasslands, few have focused on the timing of rainfall events. Therefore, I designed a field experiment to test how the timing of a single large rain event (deluge) influences plant production and carbon cycling of the shortgrass prairie. I added a deluge to plots in either early, mid, or later summer, and tracked soil moisture, soil respiration, and growth of the dominant species. The mid-summer deluge increased plant production, and therefore carbon sequestration, the most.
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Subject
rainfall
precipitation
prairie
blue grama
timing