Detling, James K.2007-01-032007-01-031999-2000http://hdl.handle.net/10217/83512http://dx.doi.org/10.25675/10217/83512The Short Grass Steppe site encompasses a large portion of the Colorado Piedmont Section of the western Great Plains. The extent is defined as the boundaries of the Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER). The CPER has a single ownership and landuse (livestock grazing). The PNG is characterized by a mosaic of ownership and land use. Ownership includes federal, state or private and land use consists of livestock grazing or row-crops. There are NGO conservation groups that exert influence over the area, particularly on federal lands.Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL)Shortgrass Steppe-Long Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER)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. We investigated the use of prairie dog towns by cattle (Bos taurus) on the shortgrass steppe of northeastern Colorado by conducting surveys of cattle and vegetation from June to August 1999. Cattle presence and behavior were recorded 3 times a week during driving surveys of 15 black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) towns. A subset of 3 pastures with prairie dog towns was intensively surveyed twice weekly wherein the habitat and activity of a randomly chosen focal animal was recorded every 6 minutes for 3.5 hours. Bite and step counts of other individuals were recorded for 5-minute intervals. Vegetation height and cover data were collected monthly on each of 6 habitats. Results from driving surveys and intensively surveyed pastures were similar; cattle neither significantly preferred nor avoided prairie dog towns. Bare ground cover on prairie dog towns did not significantly differ from most other habitats, but vegetation on prairie dog towns was significantly shorter on (mean = 6.7 cm) than that off (mean = 11.9 cm) prairie dog towns. Nevertheless, foraging observations indicated that there was no significant difference between cattle foraging rates on swales (70.9 bites/min) and prairie dog towns (69.5 bites/min). Thus, cattle on the shortgrass steppe appear to use prairie dog towns in proportion to their availability and, while there, they graze as intensively as they do on habitats not inhabited by prairie dogs.ZIPPDFTXTXMLengData sets were provided by the Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER) Program, a partnership between Colorado State University, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, and the U.S. Forest Service Pawnee National Grassland. Significant funding for these data was provided by the National Science Foundation Long Term Ecological Research program (NSF Grant Number DEB-1027319). The SGS-LTER project (1980-2014) was established as one of the first sites in the US LTER Network and has produce a rich legacy of digital materials including reports, proposals, images, and data packages. Data, products and other information produced from the SGS-LTER are curated as a collection within the Repository (http://hdl.handle.net/10217/100254). Materials can be accessed from the Institutional Digital Repository of Colorado State University or upon request by emailing ecodata_nrel@colostate.edu. All data are open for dissemination and re-use for any purpose, but you must attribute credit to the owner and cite use appropriately according to the LTER Data Access Policy (http://www.lternet.edu/policies/data-access).biodiversitygrazingmammalsanimalsplantsplant/animal interactionsrodentsgrasslandsvegetation structurecommunity ecologyDataset