Moderate patchiness optimizes heterogeneity, stability, and beta diversity in mesic grassland.

ABSTRACT: Heterogeneous disturbance patterns are fundamental to rangeland conservation and management because heterogeneity creates patchy vegetation, broadens niche availability, increases compositional dissimilarity, and enhances temporal stability of aboveground biomass production. Pyrodiversity is a popular concept for how variability in fire as an ecological disturbance can enhance heterogeneity, but mechanistic understanding of factors that drive heterogeneity is lacking. Mesic grasslands are examples of ecosystems in which pyrodiversity is linked strongly to broad ecological processes such as trophic interactions because grazers are attracted to recently burned areas, creating a unique ecological disturbance referred to as the fire-grazing interaction, or pyric herbivory. But several question

SUBMITTER: McGranahan DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5980247 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature