Untitled DocumentResponse of rangeland vegetation to multi-year drought: Integrating water, plant, and soil processes and their role in vegetation change
Macro Theme Area:
Basin Scale Water Balance [Project ID: B04]
PI:
Eric Small
CO-PI(s):
Will Pockman
Basin focus:
Rio Grande
Specific area in
basin /
field sites:
Rio Grande
Summary/Goals: The project goal is to quantify how different semiarid ecosystems repond to multi-year anomalies in precipitation. Measurements and monitoring of various ecosystem processes will allow for idenfitication of feedbacks in response to forcing.
Activities and outcomes during past year:
1. Analysis of runoff data across drought treatment. Initial results indicate that the fraction of rainfall that is partitioned to runoff is greater in drought plots than control plots in the grassland. In contrast, runoff is equal across plots in the shrubland. This data will be written up into a manuscript in 2006.
2. Completion of manuscript made possible via SAHRA support at Sevilleta sites: Small, E. E. and Kurc, S., 2003, Tight coupling between soil moisture and the surface radiation budget in semiarid environments: Implications for land-atmosphere interactions. Water Resources Research, 39. 4, 10, 1278.
3. Completion of third year of drought treatment and data collection.
Plans for the upcoming year:
Continued drought treatment and data collection. Continuation of water addition treatment, via NIGEC funding.
Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Site
Organization Involvement:
The Sevilleta LTER has contributed salary (PI, graduate student,
and technicians), supplemental equipment funding, and field crew time.
Shared Resources / Joint Activities:
Rainfall manipulation plots at the Sevilleta
Wildlife Refuge. The experimental plots are a key element of the
current Sevilleta research program.
Organization Involvement:
The drought project research at the Sevilleta is now primarily funded by a NIGEC grant to Will Pockman (UNM) and E. Small.
Shared Resources / Joint Activities:
At present, additional infrastucture is being added to the experimental plots at the Sevilleta via NIGEC support. The NIGEC grant is also paying for a half time technician and graduate student salary.
