Journal
JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS
Volume 47, Issue 3, Pages 257-270Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD
DOI: 10.1006/jare.2000.0678
Keywords
net primary productivity; semi-arid ecosystems; Chihuahuan Desert; spatial heterogeneity; Prosopis glandulosa; Bouteloua eriopoda; Larrea tridentata; Jornada LTER program
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Patchiness of above-ground vegetation, such as that in semi-arid grasslands and shrublands, can pose problems in sampling plant cover, biomass and productivity. We present a method of measuring above-ground plant biomass and production that can be applied consistently among vegetation types and that generates seasonal, spatially-explicit results. Results from 15 sites within the Jornada Basin (Chihuahuan Desert, New Mexico, U.S.A.) confirm considerable patchiness and non-normal distributions of plant biomass, even in grasslands. However, tests of adequacy of sample size and of sample error associated with the regression-based estimates of biomass confirmed that the estimates of above-ground net primary productivity are sufficiently precise to be useful in comparisons of both shrub-dominated and grassland sites. (C) 2001 Academic Press.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available