Prescribed burning in central Texas ecosystems: impacts and feedbacks between altered plant functional groups and ecosystem processes.
Prescribed burning is a common land management practice used on the Edwards Plateau and throughout Texas to reduce encroachment of woody species in savanna and grassland ecosystems. Although fire is a historical component of these ecosystems, landowners have altered the natural burn cycle by burning during the cool months rather than the hot months. This recent human intervention to the burn cycle has resulted in well documented changes in plant density, total plant biomass and plant functional group composition (e.g. shifts in dominance of warm season grasses (C 4 photosynthetic pathway) vs. cool season grasses and forbs (C 3 photosynthetic pathway)). The focus of our research is to test what impact these rapid shifts in plant cover due to prescribed burn treatments have on the carbon budget in savanna ecosystems on the Edwards Plateau , soil fluxes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, belowground carbon storage, water use, nitrogen cycling and plant-insect interactions.
Collaborators: Mary Poteet, University of Texas , Austin; Mark Simmons, Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center