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- All Subjects: Sonoran Desert
- Creators: School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences
- Creators: Barron, Kara Lynn
- Resource Type: Text
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Pollution causes many health problems in the modern world and the desert climates struggle with pollution in unique ways. In the Sonoran Desert, the research was conducted with the purpose of expanding the knowledge of the topic in this area. A literature review was conducted based on air, soil and noise pollution in the region. The Sonoran Desert has high levels of carcinogenic elements along with other pollutants due to the main industries of mining, agriculture and manufacturing. Overall, these findings show people in desert climates deal with high levels of pollutants.
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Aboveground-belowground relationships between vegetation and its associated soil biotic community play an important role in every terrestrial ecosystem for nutrient cycling and soil health maintenance. Deserts are especially sensitive to change and little is known about Sonoran Desert soil microbiota, while exotic herbaceous species are increasingly invading into the ecosystem with other harmful effects. In many other environments, soil communities have been associated with both plant species and plant functional type. The soil community food web depends on the sustenance brought by vegetation, and different soil community members are adapted to different diets. In this paper, we hypothesized that invasive plants would cause belowground soil communities to have greater abundance and lesser diversity than those under native, more locally established plants. To test this hypothesis, we selected four desert understory plant taxa: one native grass, one native forb, one invasive grass, and one invasive forb. We predicted that the invasive plants would be associated with a greater count of microarthropods per unit mass of soil but lesser microarthropod species diversity. The invasive plants were not statistically associated with a greater count of microarthropods per kilogram of soil nor lesser microarthropod species diversity. There was not a significant difference in abundance in the microarthropod categories between native and invasive plants, so the hypothesis was rejected. However, the invasive Erodium cicutarium was found to harbor high soil mite abundance, which warrants further study, and it is yet to be seen whether soil moisture and proximity to trees played a role in the data. The results of this study should help in generating more informed hypotheses regarding desert aboveground-belowground relationships.
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A floristic inventory was conducted at Cave Creek Regional Park (CCRP), Maricopa County, AZ. One hundred fifty-four taxa were documented within Park boundaries, including 148 species and six infraspecific taxa in 43 families. Asteraceae, Boraginaceae, and Fabaceae accounted for 40% of documented species and annuals accounted for 56% of documented diversity.
Fire effects were studied at three locations within McDowell Sonoran Preserve (MSP), Scottsdale, AZ. These fires occurred throughout the 1990s and recovered naturally. Fire and reseeding effects were studied at the site of a 2005 fire within CCRP that was reseeded immediately following the fire.
Two questions underlie the study regarding fire and reseeding effects: 1) How did fire and reseeding affect the cover and diversity of the plant communities? 2) Is there a difference in distribution of cover between treatments for individual species or growth habits? To address these questions, I compared burned and adjacent unburned treatments at each site, with an additional reseeded treatment added at CCRP.
MSP sites revealed overall diversity and cover was similar between treatments, but succulent cover was significantly reduced, and subshrub cover was significantly greater in the burn treatment. Seventeen species showed significant difference in distribution of cover between treatments.
The CCRP reseeded site revealed 11 of 28 species used in the seed mix persist 12 years post-fire. The reseeded treatment showed greater overall diversity than burned and unburned treatments. Succulent and shrub cover were significantly reduced by fire while subshrub cover was significantly greater in the reseeded treatment. Sixteen species showed significant difference in distribution of cover between treatments.
Fire appears to impact plant community composition across Arizona Upland sites. Choosing species to include in seed mixes for post-fire reseeding, based on knowledge of pre-fire species composition and individual species’ fire responses, may be a useful tool to promote post-fire plant community recovery.