Good resource to download movie. A lot of movies online, free movies.


Good resource to download movie. A lot of movies online, free movies.

Feb

1

2007
 
 

Species drop in wetter grassland



aerial viewDiversity set to fall as rainfall patterns change

Climate change is only the beginning of the overhaul our ecosystem faces. Writing in this week’s Science, University of California, Berkeley’s Blake Suttle and co-workers show how, by describing a big field experiment they’ve spent the last five years working on. Dividing up a California grassland into circular plots — the whole thing came to resemble some sort of extra-terrestrial’s shindig — they found that increasing the amount of rainfall sparked a nasty domino effect. In the first year of the experiment, the extra spring rain (which some climate models predict) triggered a bloom of nitrogen-fixing forbs but not much else. In subsequent years, however, the dieback of those forbs provided everything else with a handy source of fertilizer, which favored the growth of the annual grass species. The effect was so great that in turn the end-of-year grass litter suppressed the leafy forbs. The end result? A nosedive in overall plant species diversity. Worse, the creepy-crawlies suffered too, being dependent on the surge in forb vegetation later in the year. Suttle’s experiment shows that things are rarely as simple as they seem, even in a dried up field.

Source: Suttle, KB, Thomsen, MA & Power, ME (2007) Species interactions reverse grassland responses to changing climate. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1136401

Filed Under Climate change, Habitat, Monitoring | 

Email This Post Email This Post

Comments

Leave a Reply







Full-length hd, dvd, divx download movies resource. See also rmvb player and directshow decoder