SGS-LTER aboveground vegetation measurements on and off US Forest Service burns on the Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, USA 1997-2004

Abstract

This data package was produced by researchers working on the Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER) Project, administered at Colorado State University. Long-term datasets and background information (proposals, reports, photographs, etc.) on the SGS-LTER project are contained in a comprehensive project collection within the Repository (http://hdl.handle.net/10217/100254). The data table and associated metadata document, which is generated in Ecological Metadata Language, may be available through other repositories serving the ecological research community and represent components of the larger SGS-LTER project collection. Most investigators studying grasslands have assumed that the low standing biomass of the SGS created a system with a low probability of carrying fire, and thus a minimal historical role of fire. Nonetheless, there are years with aboveground biomass equivalent to the mixed grass prairie, and a high frequency of lightening storms. Regardless of the historical role of fire in SGS, there are new questions regarding its utility in managing for the presence of the threatened mountain plover, which only nests in areas of low plant biomass. United States Forest Service, Pawnee National Grassland recently initiated a burning program in the mid 1990s to address questions about using fire to increase plover habitat; we have collected data on some of these plots to investigate the influence of fire on SGS vegetation. Several datasets were created between 1999 and 2004 by SGS-LTER researchers, including measurements of shrub and cactus mortality rates, aboveground net primary production, amounts of litter and standing dead, and aboveground nitrogen dynamics in burned and control plots in the western section of the Pawnee National Grassland.