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New Photos Added in the Technical Overview Pages
Prairie Heating and CO2
Enrichment (PHACE)
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rangeland ecosystems occupy a large land area (over 250 Mha) in the U.S.
These lands dominate the landscape and socioeconomic fabric of the
western United States. As extensively managed native ecosystems
with limited management options (compared to more intensively-managed
row-crop agriculture), they are particularly sensitive to the vagaries
of climate. Rangelands are expected to be strongly affected by
global climate change, although little research has been done to verify
these predictions. PHACE is a field experiment for subjecting
native mixed-grass prairie near Cheyenne, WY to elevated CO2 and warming for
understanding how this important grassland of the northern and central Great
Plains will respond to global change over the next 50 years. Such
information is critical for developing innovative management options to deal
with the impacts of global change on western rangelands, as well as for
developing practices for mitigating atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions of
the western United States.
Customers of
our research will include policy makers, state and federal agency land
management professionals, and ultimately ranchers and the general public.
Some of the major project objectives of this project include: |
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Develop
new knowledge of plant production, species change, and weed invasion
response to global change.
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Determine how elevated CO2 and warming affect nutrient and
water dynamics.
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Determine the role of
altered nutrient dynamics, plant metabolism and plant species changes on
forage quality.
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Construct improved
models for predicting long-term responses of semi-arid rangelands to
global change and decision support systems to help ranchers and public
land managers deal with the anticipated increased variation in weather.
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Develop management
practices to account for altered productivity and declining forage quality
due to global change.
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Develop management
strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
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Collaborators:
This project is a collaboration between the United States Department of
Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS; Cheyenne, WY, Fort
Collins, CO, Phoenix, AZ, USA), University of Wyoming, the Institute for
BioMeteorology (IBIMET, CNR, Italia), University of North Carolina, and
Colorado State University. See section VI below for a list of researchers.
(put institutional icons at bottom of this page, including institutions
like DOE when grants are funded) |
Telephone
970-492-7121
FAX
970-492-7160
Postal address
1701 Centre Ave Fort Collins, CO 80525
Electronic mail
General Information:
Jack.Morgan@ars.usda.gov
Webmaster: John.Lambert@ars.usda.gov
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