Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Desert In Disguise: The Resilience Of The Nebraska Sandhills, Jeff Hartman

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Nebraska Sandhills are the largest sand dune system in the Western Hemisphere, and are unique because they remain relatively undisturbed from row crop agriculture. Research in the past two decades demonstrated that the Sandhills are dynamic on millennial timescales, switching between stabilized, vegetated states to non-vegetated, mobilized states. The Sandhills are currently stabilized, but understanding how ecological processes are altered as sand dunes transition from stabilized to mobilized states, provides insight into the thresholds, stability, and resilience of this grassland ecosystem. My research investigated the impacts of vegetation disturbances on ecological processes and the sand dune surface stability. For …