Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons^™

A Plea For Scale, And Why It Matters For Invasive Species Management, Biodiversity And Conservation, Nicholas A. Mcmillan, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Craig A. Davis, Robert G. Hamilton, Landon. K. Neumann, Samantha M. Cady

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

1. Invasive species are suspected to be major contributors to biodiversity declines worldwide. Counterintuitively, however, invasive species effects are likely scale dependent and are hypothesized to be positively related to biodiversity at large spatial scales. Past studies investigating the effect of invasion on biodiversity have been mostly conducted at small scales (<100 m²) that cannot represent large dynamic landscapes by design. Therefore, replicated experimental evidence supporting a negative effect of invasive plants on biodiversity is lacking across many landscape types, including large grasslands.

2. We collected data across eight large (333–809 ha) grassland landscapes managed with pyric herbivory—that is the recoupling …

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Tracking Spatial Regimes In Animal Communities: Implications For Resilience-Based Management, Caleb P. Roberts, Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Larkin A. Powell, Brady W. Allred, Matthew O. Jones, Jeremy D. Maestas, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Spatial regimes (the spatial extents of ecological states) exhibit strong spatiotemporal order as they expand or contract in response to retreating or encroaching adjacent spatial regimes (e.g., woody plant invasion of grasslands) and human management (e.g., fire treatments). New methods enable tracking spatial regime boundaries via vegetation landcover data, and this approach is being used for strategic management across biomes. A clear advancement would be incorporating animal community data to track spatial regime boundaries alongside vegetation data. In a 41,170-hectare grassland experiencing woody plant encroachment, we test the utility of using animal community data to track spatial regimes via two …

Land-Use Type As A Driver Of Large Wildfire Occurrence In The U.S. Great Plains, Victoria M. Donovan, Carissa L. Wonkka, David A. Wedin, Dirac Twidwell

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Wildfire activity has surged in North America’s temperate grassland biome. Like many biomes, this system has undergone drastic land-use change over the last century; however, how various land-use types contribute to wildfire patterns in grassland systems is unclear. We determine if certain land-use types have a greater propensity for large wildfire in the U.S. Great Plains and how this changes given the percentage of land covered by a given land-use type. Almost 90% of the area burned in the Great Plains occurred in woody and grassland land-use types. Although grassland comprised the greatest area burned by large wildfires, woody vegetation …