Colorado mountains
From Long-Term Data to Understanding: Toward a Predictive Ecology
2015 LTER ASM Estes Park, CO - August 30 - September 2, 2015
 

Using plant-soil feedbacks to predict plant biomass in diversity experiments

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Poster Number: 
93
Presenter/Primary Author: 
Leslie Forero
Co-Authors: 
Andrew Kulmatiski
Co-Authors: 
Karen Beard
Co-Authors: 
Justin Heavilin
Co-Authors: 
Josephine Grenzer
Co-Authors: 
Nicole Nolan

Plants are capable of creating soils that produce feedbacks upon plant growth, but the role of plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) on plant growth in communities remains unclear.  We developed a full-factorial two-phase greenhouse PSF experiment and used growth and plant-soil feedback information to predict biomass for 155 different plant communities using five different plant growth models.  Models that incorporated plant-soil feedback information improved all five models by 10-23%. 

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