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Life Sciences Commons

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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Cal Poly Humboldt

Theses/Dissertations

2021

Climate change

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Seed Bank Composition Within Two Sagebrush Communities: A Comparison Of Drought, Microsite, And Aboveground Community Effects, Allison Marie Nunes Jan 2021

Seed Bank Composition Within Two Sagebrush Communities: A Comparison Of Drought, Microsite, And Aboveground Community Effects, Allison Marie Nunes

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Soil seed banks are critical biodiversity repositories for many dryland plant communities. Understanding how environmental factors alter seed bank composition can provide valuable information on ecological processes within a community and be useful for creating land management strategies. Using the seedling emergence method, I characterized the seed bank of two adjacent dryland plant communities that vary in dominant sagebrush species, structure, and function. Specifically, within an Artemisia arbuscula dominated community and Artemisia cana dominated community, I assessed the influence of three environmental factors on each seed bank: experimentally imposed drought, shrub microsites (compared to interspaces), and aboveground vegetation. Within the …