Impacts of patch burn grazing on the invertebrate communities of Kansas rangelands
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Zachary Bunch (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Kimberly Komatsu
Abstract: Patch-Burn Grazing (PBG) is a rangeland management strategy that promotes heterogeneity across a landscape by burning discrete patches of land. This is a contrast to Annual-Burn Grazing (ABG) which promotes homogeneity across the landscape and is commonly used across the rangelands of the midwestern United States. The heterogeneity generated by PBG has been shown to benefit a variety of taxa, including birds, small mammals, and plants. However, the impacts of PBG on invertebrate communities are not well understood. This thesis investigates the impacts of PBG on the invertebrate communities of Kansas rangelands. I compare aboveground and belowground invertebrate richness, evenness, and abundance in PBG plots to those in ABG plots, examining both mean shifts and changes in variance across the landscape. My results show that PBG changes mean aboveground invertebrate community composition and increases variance around that mean. However, aboveground invertebrate richness, evenness, and total abundance were not impacted by PBG. For belowground invertebrate communities, I only observed a significant difference in variance among plots based on years since burning. Together, my thesis results suggest that PBG may be a beneficial management strategy for conservation. Because PBG promotes heterogeneity across a landscape, benefiting many taxa and mostly not impacting invertebrates, it is a conservation strategy worth consideration.
Impacts of patch burn grazing on the invertebrate communities of Kansas rangelands
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- Cattle, Community Dynamics, Heterogeneity, Rangeland Management, Tallgrass Prairie