Grassland plant composition alters vehicular disturbance effects in Kansas, USA.

Environmental Management
Timothy L DicksonDick L Gebhart

Abstract

Many "natural" areas are exposed to military or recreational off-road vehicles. The interactive effects of different types of vehicular disturbance on vegetation have rarely been examined, and it has been proposed that some vegetation types are less susceptible to vehicular disturbance than others. At Fort Riley, Kansas, we experimentally tested how different plant community types changed after disturbance from an M1A1 Abrams tank driven at different speeds and turning angles during different seasons. The greatest vegetation change was observed because of driving in the spring in wet soils and the interaction of turning while driving fast (vegetation change was measured with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity). We found that less vegetation change occurred in communities with high amounts of native prairie vegetation than in communities with high amounts of introduced C(3) grasses, which is the first experimental evidence we are aware of that suggests plant communities dominated by introduced C(3) grasses changed more because of vehicular disturbance than communities dominated by native prairie grasses. We also found that vegetation changed linearly with vehicular disturbance intensity, suggesting that at least initially there was no ca...Continue Reading

References

Oct 1, 1986·American Journal of Community Psychology·R J Scheidt
Oct 12, 2001·Nature·M SchefferB Walker
Sep 3, 2002·Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine·Rodolphe ThiébautDaniel Commenges
Mar 22, 2006·Journal of Environmental Management·Jeffrey R FosterKatie Simmons
May 17, 2006·Trends in Ecology & Evolution·Katharine N SudingGregory R Houseman

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