{"id":595661,"date":"2023-01-09T05:49:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T11:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/reintroducing-bison-on-tallgrass-prairie-doubles-plant-diversity-research\/"},"modified":"2023-01-09T05:49:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T11:49:15","slug":"reintroducing-bison-on-tallgrass-prairie-doubles-plant-diversity-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/reintroducing-bison-on-tallgrass-prairie-doubles-plant-diversity-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Reintroducing bison on tallgrass prairie doubles plant diversity: research"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<article id=\"node-333089\" role=\"article\">\n<header>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.agriculture.com\/news\/business\/kansas-research-shows-reintroducing-bison-on-tallgrass-prairie-doubles-plant-diversity\" rel=\"bookmark\"><\/a><\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<div>\n<p>\n\t<em>By Tim Carpenter<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tDecades of research led by scientists at Kansas State University offered evidence reintroducing bison to roam the tallgrass prairie gradually doubled plant diversity and improved resilience to extreme drought.\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t<strong>READ MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.agriculture.com\/news\/business\/missouri-tax-cut-special-session-delayed-at-least-a-week-as-negotiations-continue\">Missouri tax cut special session delayed at least a week as negotiations continue<\/a><\/strong>\n\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n\tGains documented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science were among the largest recorded globally in terms of species richness on grazing grasslands. The research involved more than 30 years of data collected at the Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tZak Ratajczak, lead researcher and assistant professor of biology at Kansas State, said removal of nearly all bison from the prairie occurred before establishment of quantitative records. That meant effects of removing the dominant grazer were largely unknown, he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cBison\u00a0were an integral part of North American grasslands before they were abruptly removed from over 99% of the Great Plains,\u201d Ratajczak said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe research took place in the Flint Hills ecoregion, which is the largest remaining landscape of tallgrass prairie. Researchers examined plant composition and diversity on sections of land with no mega-grazers present, with\u00a0bison\u00a0allowed to graze throughout the year and with domestic cattle allowed to graze during the growing season.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cOur results suggest that many grasslands in the central Great Plains have substantially lower plant biodiversity than would have occurred before\u00a0bison\u00a0were widely wiped out,\u201d\u00a0Ratajczak said.\u00a0\u201cReturning or \u2018rewilding\u2019 native megafauna could help to restore grassland biodiversity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t<strong>READ MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.agriculture.com\/crops\/crop-protection\/consider-margin-protection-for-your-2023-crops\">Consider margin protection for your 2023 crops<\/a><\/strong>\n\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n\tThe study confirmed cattle had a positive impact on plant diversity, compared to having no large grazers present. The increases with cattle in terms of plant species richness were significantly smaller than those related to\u00a0bison.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAlong with addressing land use, researchers sought to understand how\u00a0bison\u00a0influenced plant resilience to climate extremes. Because of the duration of the study, researchers were able to capture one of the most extreme drought events that has occurred in the Great Plains since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe resilience we found in the\u00a0bison\u00a0grasslands is also consistent with the idea that diversity promotes ecological resilience,\u201d Ratajczak said. \u201cAnd this resilience will only become more important if our climate becomes more extreme.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOther\u00a0K\u2013State\u00a0biology researchers on the study were Jesse Nippert and John Blair, professors; Allison Louthan, assistant professor; and Jeffrey Taylor, research assistant. Additional collaborators included Scott Collins, University of New Mexico; Sally Koerner, University of North Carolina; and Melinda Smith, Colorado\u00a0State\u00a0University.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cSome of the most meaningful ecological trends take decades to unfold,\u201d Nippert said. \u201cWithout this type of data, fundamental properties of ecosystems may go unnoticed using only short-term experiments.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tA series of six grants totaling more than $31.6 million since 1980 from the National Science Foundation funded the study and was conducted as part of the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, program.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe research done at the Konza Prairie is truly unique and impressive,\u00a0\u201d\u00a0said David Rosowsky,\u00a0K\u2013State\u00a0vice president for research.\u00a0\u201cThere are very few locations in the world that can provide this type of long-term data that can have such a strong impact on how we interact with our natural resources.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe Konza Prairie Biological Station is jointly owned by\u00a0Kansas\u00a0State\u00a0University and the Nature Conservancy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em><a href=\"https:\/\/kansasreflector.com\/\">The Kansas Reflector<\/a>\u00a0is part of the States Newsroom, a network of similar news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.agriculture.com\/news\/business\/kansas-research-shows-reintroducing-bison-on-tallgrass-prairie-doubles-plant-diversity\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><br \/>\n Buffy Noren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Tim Carpenter Decades of research led by scientists at Kansas State University offered evidence reintroducing bison to roam the tallgrass prairie gradually doubled plant diversity and improved resilience to extreme drought. READ MORE:\u00a0Missouri tax cut special session delayed at least a week as negotiations continue Gains documented in the journal Proceedings of the National<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":595662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40126,112753,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-595661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bison","8":"category-reintroducing","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}