PGSVALID

Accurate prediction of the regional responses of CO2 flux to changing climate, land use, and management requires models that are parameterized and tested against measurements made in multiple land cover types and over seasonal to inter-annual time scales. In an extension of our earlier work on crop systems, we investigated the effects of burning on the cycles of carbon, water, and energy in an example of grazed land of the Southern Great Plains. In collaboration with Dr. Herman Mayeux, of the USDA Grazing Lands Research Laboratory (GRL), we conducted a treatment-control experiment comparing fluxes and other ecosystem properties in adjacent burned and unburned fields containing native prairie at GRL near El Reno, Oklahoma. Our hypotheses, specific to the burning experiment were that, 1) burning affects the timing and amount of above ground production but, 2) not affect the total carbon exchange when the carbon lost during the burn is accounted for.

Timeline

Campaign Data Sets